where is this coin getting its popularity from?
i havent seen any reference of media attention.
In my opinion it has an interesting reward system that is high, but not too high, its not exact 2mil each block so there is variance to keep it from climbing too quickly and being perfectly predictable. It has a nice name and interesting concept and reason. I don't think that the reason is enough to warrant it being the world currency, but I really do like the idea of giving things I like good karma.
You can say that you can do that with any btc, or any coin but that means people asking for it by knowing what it is or posting a link. The idea that I can mail and author/developer/good doer/webdev/whatever and say I wanna give you Karma, and its worth something to you, is a nice gesture that instantly tells them that the reason I am giving it to them is the good that they did (while you could argue free money does that in a way) is nice to me.
Outside of that and exceedingly fair launch with the blockchain rest twice to thwart people trying to take advantage of it, a pool other than the dev's ending up mining more coins than the devs due to a ddos (probably the same exploiters), gave a lot of fair chance to it. If the dev is going to do things to support it, it will be because of the idea of the coin being given back to them as much as it sucks their pool got ddosed.
Finally, its similar to doge in some regards, without being a silly meme. Doge was fun, and the devs are very smart business people with good ideas but the idea of a meme having real value is hard to grasp. The rewards, difficultly, etc, seem to fit very well in the idea of a world currency that is smaller than btc/ltc, but its still hahaha dogecoin. This instead, imo, has potential as presenting itself seriously, having similar qualities, and a reason the internet could use it. While not necessarily being the penny to the btc, use is value, and with value there is more use. While again that could be said about any coin, if I do something interesting I don't want to say, 'hey give me money.' I want to say, 'hey give me some karma!' Though its a religious idea, is surpasses the religion because its taken on a social meaning.
Also, in all of the posts in the current thread, it seems to be filled with lack of greed. While I'm sure there are many, including myself (I would love to pay off my debt and be a free man with its sales), that are just doing it for money, the atmosphere of the thread has been quite friendly because the idea of it is friendly and something we can all get behind. Good is good. Good is good, bad is bad. There are many of gray areas, but good is fucking good. If it is good, I want to support it. Not right(which is personal opinion), but good!
Just my 2karmas