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Degens and lovers of internet memes, this one is for you.
On Thursday, PleasrDAO announced that the next episode of PleasrHouse will be all about the doge. Beginning February 7, 2023, PleasrHouse will host a 24-hour NFT auction that will give the winner ownership of the couch from the original doge meme. Yes, the couch.
NFTs related to oddities and curiosities are not new. In January 2023, a collection of 10,000 pixelated feet topped the charts on OpenSea. Feetpix (or Feetpix.wtf) briefly soared ahead of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and other blue-chip NFT staples to become the 5th most-traded collection on the NFT marketplace when it launched.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital collectibles showing proof of digital assets’ ownership, including videos, music, memberships, and physical items, including shoes, bathroom access at Mardi Gras, and even underwear.
The PleasrHouse episode will stream live on February 8 at 7:30 pm ET and will feature guests, original photographer Atsuko Sato, and Kabosu, Shiba Inu from the iconic internet meme. The episode will also feature an Open Edition NFT drop that the group says will further honor Kabosu and support charity.
PleasrDAO member and Own the Doge community lead “Tridog” said in a statement the idea to auction the couch came when 17-year-old Kabosu got sick in January 2023, and the group and others banded together to help Atsuko/Kabosu with medical bills.
According to PleasrDAO, the auction will be the original couch pictured in the 2010 photo of Kabosu. The auction winner will immediately receive an NFT, which includes the right to claim the actual couch from Sato. Eberle explains that those not ready to bid to own the couch outright can still own a piece of the meme through the fractionalized photo with Own The Doge.
Launched in March 2021 and named in honor of digital artist Emily “pplpleasr” Yang, PleasrDAO was initially formed to buy an NFT by the famed digital artist. In January, PleasrDAO launched PleasrHouse to coincide with the minting of an Ethereum NFT by whistleblower Edward Snowden and political activist Daniel Ellsberg.
The project called “Wouldn’t You Go to Prison to Help End This War?” commemorated the release of Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers in 1971 and was auctioned during a live stream event hosted by PleasrHouse, with proceeds going to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Daniel Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy.
“Episode 01 of PleasrHouse was a success,” Chris Eberle, Head of Marketing for PleasrDAO, told Decrypt. “Feedback on the product, the content, and the caliber of our guests was overwhelmingly positive, and we know crypto Twitter will tell you when they don’t like something.”
Eberle says the group would have liked to have raised more to support the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Daniel Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy but said the Ellsberg piece sold for 14.69 ETH, around $24,112.
According to Eberle, PleasrDAO acquired the original Doge photo from Sato in a 2021 NFT auction for 1696.9 ETH, $4.8 million at the time.
Since acquiring the picture and subsequently fractionalizing it, PleasrDAO says a relationship formed between Own The Doge and Sato to raise money for her favorite charities helping animals and children. The group says this upcoming couch auction will continue that mission.
“When we fractionalized the NFT, we started the Own The Doge (OTD) community, who has developed a very strong relationship with Atsuko,” Eberle said. “The Do Only Good Everyday ethos from dogecoiners really resonates with Atsuko, and the OTD community has donated $2M+ to charities. $1M of those donations went to Save The Children, and is their largest crypto donation to date.”
Jackson Palmer created Dogecoin in 2013 as a joke playing on the “doge” Shiba Inu meme. The meme is based on a photo by Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato of Kabosu. Palmer left the Dogecoin project in 2015 and has become a vocal critic of cryptocurrency.
From its humble beginnings as a meme-coin, Dogecoin is today a serious player in the crypto space, especially since 2020 when billionaire Elon Musk began championing the meme-coin. It is now one of the top ten cryptocurrencies on the market and the second-largest proof-of-work blockchain after Bitcoin, according to CoinMarketCap.
“This whole format—an NFT auction during a live streaming talk show with folks chatting with their ENS as their chat handles—is an experiment,” Eberle said. “We’re learning as we go.”