“UNBELIEVABLE” EVENTS
Dogecoin has been backed by hip-hop star Snoop Dogg, Shark Tank entrepreneur Mark Cuban and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.
But its most keen supporter is probably the billionaire Musk, who jokes about the currency on X – sending its value soaring – and hails it as “the people’s crypto”.
Dogecoin has also inspired a plethora of other cheap and highly volatile “memecoins”, including spin-off Shiba Inu and others based on dogs, cats or Donald Trump.
Kabosu fell ill with leukaemia and liver disease in late 2022, and Sato said in a recent interview with AFP in her home of Sakura, east of Tokyo, that the “invisible power” of prayers from fans worldwide helped her pull through.
The 62-year-old Sato said she had become so used to “unbelievable” events that, when Tesla boss Musk changed the icon for Twitter, now X, to Kabosu’s face last year, she “wasn’t even that surprised”.
“In the last few years I’ve been able to connect the online version of Kabosu, all these unexpected things seen from a distance, with our real lives,” she told AFP.
A US$100,000 statue of Kabosu and her sofa crowdfunded by Own The Doge, a crypto organisation dedicated to the meme, was unveiled in a park in Sakura in November last year.
Sato and Own The Doge have also donated large sums to international charities, including more than US$1 million to Save the Children. The non-governmental organisation says it is “the single largest crypto contribution” it has ever received.
“The Doge is the most popular dog of the modern era,” said Tridog, a pseudonymous member of Own The Doge, describing Kabosu as “the Mona Lisa of the internet”.
