Japanese dog Shiba Inu memes auctioned for 29.29 crore, breaks all record

The meme was put up for auction on Tuesday (June 15) on the auction site Zora, and the winner, @pleasrdao, was named on Friday with a bid of 1,696.9 Ethereum cryptocurrency, which is worth about $4 million. The meme was sold by Atsuko Sato, the owner of the eponymous "Doge."

"Doge" emerged online in 2013 as a meme using overlaid Comic Sans text to describe the dog's fictional inner monologue. It quickly became one of the internet's most ubiquitous images, with others sharing the meme with their own spins on the dog's internal monologue.

After the meme became popular in 2013, two software engineers created a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin as a joke in the meme's honour. But, as Barron's reported in May of this year, the crypto is "too important to laugh off." Text used over the "Doge" meme typically uses an improper modification structure, crafting phrases like "much hungry" or "very NFT."

"We're so happy to be a part of this milestone in internet history. If any meme deserved to be the new meme NFT record holder, it's Doge," said Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of the internet meme database Know Your Meme, which certified Doge ahead of the auction to ensure that the meme was being sold by its rightful owner. Caldwell added that Doge, which he called "one of the most iconic memes in internet history," had previously won Know Your Meme's 'Meme of the Decade' award in December 2019.

The term "Doge" stems from the Flash cartoon "Homestar Runner." In a 2005 episode, the titular character Homestar calls another character his "D-O-G-E." Five years later, in 2010, Sato posted the image of Kabosu to her personal blog, not realizing the photo would take on a life of its own.