On February, 23rd, 2010, Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato posted several photos of her rescue-adopted Shiba Inu dog Kabosu to her personal blog. Among the photos included a peculiar shot of Kabosu sitting on a couch while glaring sideways at the camera with raised eyebrows. In December 2013, shortly after the breakout of “Doge,” the tech news site The Verge published an article identifying Sato’s Kabosu as the original Shiba Inu depicted in the meme. In addition to Kabosu, The Verge also identified “Suki,” a Shiba Inu who lives with San Francisco-based photographer Jonathan Fleming, as the scarfed dog, portrayed in another popular instance of the meme. On October 28th, 2010, a photo of Kabosu was submitted to the /r/Ads subreddit with the title “LMBO LOOK @THIS FUKKIN DOGE,” where it received 266 upvotes, 218 points overall and 48 comments prior to being archived. Sometime in April 2012, Tumblr user leonsumbitches uploaded an audio file of a computer reading a passage written like the commands of a turn-based adventure game about encountering a “doge.” The passage was paired with a photo of a woman patting a dog on the head and has gained more than 33,000 notes as of July 2013.In response, the single topic blog Your Daily Doge was created, but was quickly abandoned after reblogging leonsumbitches’ post several times. On May 7th, YouTuber KwandaoRen66 uploaded a video with a person reading the text over a fake Pokemon battle. By June, doge threads in which numerous people shared photos of dogs in different outfits began appearing on 4chan boards, including /v/(Video Games). The same month, a photoset of a dog with a cup and saucer balanced on his head went viral on Tumblr after airpi referred to it as “Polite Doge.” In August, the first doge single topic blog, Fuck Yeah Doge, launched on Tumblr. The growth in summer 2012 coincided with the popularity of the single topic Tumblr Shiba Confessions, as people began to refer to these dogs as “shibes.” On June 24th, 2014, the California-based gaming accessory company filed to trademark “Doge” with the United States patent office to sell card boxes and playing card covers with Kabosu’s likeness on the front. On June 23rd, The Daily Dot published an article about the trademark filing, which included a statement from Ultra PRO General Manager Jay Kuo who claimed the trademark was filed to protect the company from being sued and that they would allow “royalty-free use for any vendor who wishes to use the mark.” The article also contained a statement by Intellectual Property Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Corynne McSherry, who noted that the filing is problematic because it attempts to trademark the entire word, not just a stylized version of it.On December 6th, BitcoinTalk forum member Dogecoin introduced an alternative crypotocurrency based on the meme as a satire of the Bitcoin boom in a thread titled “Dogecoin – very currency – many coin – wow – v1.1 Released.” Similar to Bitcoin and its derivatives, Dogecoin can be mined and exchanged for goods and services among the participants, though it is programmed to level out at a higher threshold of up to 100 billion coins and prevent any use of special bitcoin-mining equipment like ASICs. In comparison, Bitcoin will cap out at 21 million coins and Litecoin will support up to 84 million coins in circulation.Following the launch of the official website, a slew of social media channels and referential webpages soon emerged for Dogecoin, including a Twitter account and a Facebook page, racking up more than 1,000 followers and 1,800 likes within the the first week, respectively. On December 8th, an entire subreddit community dedicated to the use of satirical cryptocurrency was launched at /r/dogecoin, accruing more than 2,600 subscribers in just over a week.Throughout the first weekend of December, Dogecoin was highlighted by a number of tech news sites and blogs, providing a further boost to the value of the satirical currency. By December 14th, an encyclopedic article describing the concept of “Dogecoin” had been submitted by Wikipedia editor CitationNeeded. At its peak, the estimated value of DogeCoin skyrocketed to as high as $400.80 per coin. That is all the history of the famous Doge!
