The Passing of Kabosu
This morning, Kabosu, the dog who inspired the Dogecoin (DOGE) logo, passed away at the age of 18.
Kabosu’s owner confirmed the news in a blog post on May 24th: “We will hold a farewell ceremony for Kabo-chan on Sunday, May 26th. The event will take place at Flower Kaori in Kotsu no Mori (Narita City Park) from 1 PM to 4 PM.”
She added, “Today, Kabosu, a friend and common inspiration for our community, passed away peacefully in my arms. The impact this dog had on the world is immeasurable.”
For context, this dog was the inspiration behind the creation of two of the largest meme coins by market capitalization today: DOGE (Dogecoin) and SHIB (Shiba Inu) in 2013. Although initially created as a joke, these meme coins subsequently sparked a global craze. At the peak of the bull run in 2021, DOGE surged 100-fold within a few months, partly fueled by community FOMO and frequent mentions by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Recently, another popular meme coin inspired by Kabosu, Floki (FLOKI), has also shown impressive performance, increasing by approximately 700% (8-fold) in just five months since the beginning of 2024.
Meme Coin Reactions to the News
Following the announcement of Kabosu’s passing, DOGE saw a sharp 6% increase to $0.17 before quickly dropping 6% back to $0.158 at the time of writing.
The news also caused a cooling effect on other recently popular meme coins. For instance, PEPE, a coin featuring a frog symbol unrelated to Kabosu, fell 4% after the news broke and is currently trading around $0.00001382.
Similarly, PEOPLE (ConstitutionDAO) dropped 10% from $0.88 to $0.8. This underscores the significant impact news events can have on meme coins, especially given that PEOPLE had been experiencing a surge with a 90% increase within a few days.
Other meme coins such as BONK (Bonk), FLOKI (Floki), and Dogwifhat (WIF) also faced declines ranging from 5% to 7% over the past four hours. Overall, the crypto market remains highly volatile, with Bitcoin (BTC) down 4% in the last 24 hours to $67,000, despite some Ethereum-based projects continuing to perform well.
