Why is Dogecoin so popular right now ?

 In late morning trading on Wednesday, Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that no one was supposed to take seriously, was up 43 percent. What really is going on?

Part of the excitement can be attributed to Coinbase's impending public debut. Today, almost all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, have reached new peaks. Elon Musk, once again, could be a bigger force of the Dogecoin craze.

Over the last four months, the Tesla founder has had a lot of fun on Twitter, sometimes whipping traders into a frenzy by mentioning it. He did it again on Wednesday morning.

The tweet, like many of Musk's when it comes to Dogecoin, is short and to-the-point. It's just an animated GIF of a Shiba Inu, the meme that started it all, but it's already gotten over 24,000 retweets and over 170,000 likes.

Dogecoin was selling for $12.6 at 11:19 a.m. ET, down from $14.5 earlier today. That's nothing in comparison to Bitcoin's staggering figures, but Dogecoin wasn't created to compete in that room.

Dogecoin has been around for eight years and has had a value of half a cent for the majority of that time—at most: 10,000 new Dogecoins are programmed to be released every minute for the rest of eternity, implying that the value will never hold. It's a cryptocurrency that's supposed to keep getting cheaper. Even the coin's maker is perplexed by its recent rise.

However, it's possible that at least one individual or organisation is profiting from the Dogecoin boom. In February, it was revealed that an anonymous group controls approximately 28% of all dogecoin in circulation, or 38.6 billion Dogecoins. That was worth nearly $5.6 billion at today's high point.

Dogecoin has increased by 2,613 percent year to date. It has gained 57 percent in value only on Wednesday.

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