Dogecoin cofounder Billy Markus shared a lighthearted observation about Japan’s unique dog culture in a post on X, pointing out the popularity of Shiba Inu dogs in Japan.
“Like, 50% of the dogs I see in Japan are Shiba Inu,” wrote Markus, who goes by the online handle Shibetoshi Nakamoto.
The Dogecoin cofounder‘s comment is based on his own observation when he was in Japan, where the Shiba Inu breed has deep cultural roots and is still one of the country’s most recognizable native dog breeds. Markus’ observation is noteworthy, as he is the cofounder of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that draws its origins from the Shiba Inu dog.
On December 6, 2013, Dogecoin was launched, taking influence from the famous Doge meme: an image of a very adorable Shiba Inu dog with multi-colored Comic Sans text that appears as the dog’s “thought bubbles.”
This famous meme was based on a 2010 photograph of a Japanese female Shiba Inu dog, Kabosu, adopted by Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Satō from an animal shelter in 2008. This helped establish the dog-themed cryptocurrency trend that later inspired several other tokens, including Shiba Inu (SHIB).
Shiba Inu meme: how it all began
Kabosu, a Japanese Shiba Inu, inspired a generation of online jokes and became the face of Dogecoin cryptocurrency. Kabosu was the face of the breezy Doge meme, her quizzical expression surrounded by an inner monologue of choppy phrases in bad grammar written in rainbow-colored Comic Sans font.
In 2010, two years after adopting Kabosu from a puppy mill where she would otherwise have been put down, Ms. Satō, a teacher from Sakura, east of Tokyo, took a picture of her pet crossing her paws on the sofa. She posted the image on her blog, from where it spread to online forum Reddit and became a meme that bounced from college bedrooms to office email chains.
This inspired Dogecoin, which was started as a joke by two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, and is now the 12th largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of $11.17 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Kabosu, the dog behind the “doge” meme, died in May 2024 after 14 years of internet fame.
