U.Today - , the original Dogecoin dog, has turned 18. Kabosu is the real-life dog who inspired the famous meme culture and cryptocurrencies like .
In a tweet, the celebrates this remarkable milestone. The milestone is being celebrated as the Dogecoin Foundation recalls that around this time in the past year the famed meme dog had a health scare.
In commemoration of the 18th birthday, Kabosu's bronze statue has been unveiled in Sakura City, Japan. Fans of Kabosu, the famed Shiba Inu dog, gathered funds for the statue last year.
, the SBI Group's crypto exchange branch, is asking members of the Japanese crypto community to take part in a festive campaign to commemorate Kabosu's birthday.
Kabosu's birthday is being celebrated by SBI VC Trade with a "doggie campaign." Orders of 50,000 yen or more will receive 1% of the contract value as DOGE and SHIB rewards.
The "doge" meme's popularity came to light in December 2013, when two programmers launched Dogecoin as a tongue-in-cheek response to Bitcoin that reflected the internet's love of animal memes.
Dogecoin was founded as a "joke" by software programmers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer to mock the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is regarded as the first "meme coin" as well as the first "dog coin."
, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), is a fan, branding himself "The Dogefather" after years of being affiliated with the dog-themed cryptocurrency.
At the time of writing, Dogecoin was up 1.80% in the last 24 hours to $0.068, per data.