The Doge NFT Is Officially the Most Expensive Meme Ever

Sold for $5.5 million. Much wow.

The meteoric rise of the Doge continues as the famous photo of the dog dethroned the distaster girl photo to become the most expensive meme-based NFT ever, selling for $5.5 million.

Owner of the dog Atsuko Sato put the original picture up for auction last Tuesday, and after a fierce bidding war, the meme was sold for 1,696.9 Ethereum (that’s a cryptocurrency) worth approximately $5.5 million at the time of writing.

The winning bidder was someone by the name of @pleasrdao. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Elon Musk or one of his devoted acolytes in disguise.

Btw, for those of you who are a little confused, check out our explainers on NFTs and cryptocurrencies to get up to speed. If you’re too lazy to read all that, here’s the TL;DR: NFTs are internet art, while cryptocurrencies are digital money.

So, how did the doge meme come to be?

Now 'cos we love a little bit of internet history, allow us to explain how the doge meme came to be.

The original image of the Shiba Inu dog “Kabosu”—which was the one just sold—was taken by her owner Sato back in 2010 and shared to her personal blog under the title “Taking a walk with Kabosu-chan”.

In true internet fashion, the photo began circulating across reddit in 2013 alongside the words “much”, “wow” and “very”. From there, the internet’s favourite doge spread like wildfire.

Since then, the meme sparked the creation of its own cryptocurrency Dogecoin, worth $US42 billion. Something which Tesla’s eccentric leader Musk finds very amusing, throwing his support behind the coin believing that even this joke cryptocurrency could very well become the leading currency one day for SpaceX’s missions to Mars.

Yes, everything in that last paragraph is all true. Such wow. Many head shake.

As for the money made from the auction, a portion of it will be donated to charities across Japan. Doge does it again.

Header Image: Atsuko Sato