https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/

So, what happens is, that Elon Musk posts a tweet, people see DOGE and immediately jump on the Coin, pumping it 4%, although it lingers somewhere in the basement, all the while not realizing that DOGE used to be a position of management under the Venetian Republic, and that the reason for it's creation is a DOG.

forked from Litecoin in December 2013. Dogecoin's creators envisaged it as a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience, since it was based on a dog meme. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted several tweets on social media that Dogecoin is his favorite coin.

In essence, it is litecoin [LTC], all the way down, with the facing of a dog. Funny, indeed.

The cryptocurrency [LTC] was created based on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors. Litecoin has a block time of just 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for micro-transactions and point-of-sale payments.

There you have it.

A direct improvement on LTC is BCH, which has a transaction time of a second or so, and a transaction price tag of a 10th of a cent. Why wait 2.5 minutes for a micropayment to come in, or even better, for a couple of thousand? At a POS [ point of sale] you would want speed.