Billy Markus, who joined forces with another software builder Jackson Palmer in 2013 to create the very first meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, has taken to the X platform to pay tribute to the legendary meme Shiba Inu dog Kabosu passing away on Friday.
DOGE founder comments on Kabosu’s passing
After becoming a meme in 2010, Kabosu inspired the Dogecoin creators and became the mascot of this original meme crypto.
Markus, known on X as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, published a post about Kabosu talking to Death, in which the dog says that “it’s time to go.” She asks Death if she “was a good girl” and Death tells her in response: “No. I’m told you were the best.”
The meme community supported Markus and posted memes of Kabosu and her meeting Harambe – a gorilla that became a meme after its death in 2016.
pic.twitter.com/GTXwqW13j9
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) May 24, 2024
Kabosu died on Friday in Japan at the age of 19. Atsuko Sato, who owned the dog, shared the sad news in her blog. The official Dogecoin account on X shared her post with the meme coin community.
Elon Musk’s impact on DOGE
Elon Musk, a big Dogecoin supporter, also paid tribute to Kabosu in a tweet on Friday. DOGE and another popular meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) responded to the centibillionaire’s tweet with short-lived rises. Musk tweeted that Kabosu “ascended to heaven” to meet Harambe – the gorilla that won the love of the Internet community and became a meme in 2016. A zoo staffer was forced to shoot this gorilla dead after it had grabbed a little boy who to climbed into his enclosure.
While DOGE initially began as a joke and a parody on Bitcoin (BTC code was used when building it), in the past 7-8 years the meme coin was noticed by Elon Musk and he gave it a major momentum, helping to promote it and expand its adoption as a payment option and thus turning it from just a meme into a real digital currency.
Markus and Musk often exchange comments on X and Shibetoshi Nakamoto often supports the X owner and his initiatives on transforming the former Twitter into an ultimate “everything app” X, including the integration of the Grok AI chatbot into it.
