In June 2021, a single photograph of a Shiba Inu sold for about $4 million. The buyer, a crypto collective called PleasrDAO, paid in Ethereum. No meme had ever sold for more.
The dog in the picture had no idea. She lived in an ordinary house in Sakura, a small city east of Tokyo, with the kindergarten teacher who had adopted her. Her face was already the logo of a cryptocurrency.
Two years after the sale, fans raised the money for a bronze statue of her in less than 12 hours. At 7:50 on a Friday morning in May 2024, she died at home, at 18, while her owner stroked her fur. That same day, strangers around the world reshared the photograph, taken 14 years earlier.
Almost none of them had ever met her. Most had never known her real name.
Or what became of the money her face had made.