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Balltze (2011 to August 18, 2023) was a male Shiba Inu from Hong Kong, adopted at age one from an emigrating friend by Kathy, a Hong Kong fashion designer from Kowloon, and nicknamed Ball Ball; her brother named him after the marble in a Ramune bottle. Under the meme name Cheems he became the second great meme dog after [[Kabosu]], and his face carried into [[meme coin]] culture through the CHEEMS token and the broader bonk meme family.

## The Cheems meme

A photo of Balltze was posted to his Instagram on September 4, 2017, and spread into meme templates over the following years; the Cheems name itself originated on the r/dogelore subreddit in June 2019, describing a doge variant defined by his love of cheeseburgers and a speech impediment that inserts the letter m into words. The 2020 format Swole Doge vs Cheems, contrasting a muscular historical doge with a meek modern Cheems, became one of the defining memes of the pandemic era. A companion gag showed Cheems being bonked on the head with a bat, and "bonk" entered the internet lexicon, later supplying the name and energy for [[BONK]] on [[Solana]].

## Death

Balltze was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, and his owner documented his treatment for nearly 800,000 Instagram followers. He died on August 18, 2023, at age 12, falling asleep during a thoracentesis procedure and not waking up, as reported by CNN and CBS News. His owner asked fans to celebrate his life rather than mourn, writing "Please remember the joy that Balltze brought to the world." His funeral was held on August 23, 2023, with about 13,000 US dollars in donations directed to local animal charities.

## Coin lore

Cheems imagery circulated in tokens throughout the dog coin era, and after Balltze's death the largest of them consolidated. The community token CHEEMS on BNB Chain, which uses his likeness and describes itself as fully community held, was listed on Binance on February 9, 2025, and reached a market capitalization above 170 million dollars by March 2025 according to market trackers. In July 2025 the project announced a Cheems Foundation to fund meme culture and charity initiatives. As with [[Kabosu]] and [[Dogecoin]], the dog's estate has no operational role in the tokens; the coins are tributes trading on an image the internet already owned.

## Legacy

Balltze is remembered in [[the trenches]] as the second pillar of the doge pantheon, the everydog to Kabosu's founder. His death, one day after the doge meme's own dog was in her final year, was widely framed as the closing of the classic meme dog era, even as his face continued minting new coins after his passing. Posthumous lore continued to accumulate: the Museo de Cheems opened in Mexico City in August 2024, and Kathy adopted a new Shiba Inu named Pochita, after the Chainsaw Man character, on October 3, 2024.

## References

- https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/entertainment/cheems-balltze-viral-dog-dies-intl-scli/index.html
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cheems-balltze-viral-meme-dog-ball-ball-dies-cancer/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheems
- https://www.scmp.com/video/hong-kong/3231840/viral-bonk-meme-dog-cheems-balltze-dies-12-after-battling-cancer
- https://news.bitcoin.com/cheems-token-cheems-secures-binance-listing-meme-culture-meets-blockchain-innovation-in-community-driven-ecosystem/
- https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/cheems-token

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