Among the most affordable crypto tokens on the market today is Holo (CCC:HOT-USD), which could be intriguing for audacious and open-minded investors. Suffice it to say that Holo is a fast mover — and by that, I mean in both directions.

Because of its volatility, I wouldn’t advise pouring your entire investment account into HOT coins. Instead, I would treat it like a penny stock: appropriate for small position sizes but nothing more.

That’s not to say that traders should avoid Holo altogether. After delving into the features that differentiate this lesser-known token, you might decide to initiate a long position.

Just be prepared for a wild ride with plenty of twists and turns. But if you can handle the whiplash, then let’s start off with a brief technical analysis.

A Closer Look At the Holo Crypto Price

When I told you that HOT tokens are affordable, I wasn’t kidding. A month ago, they were trading at less than a penny.

And in fact, at the beginning of 2021, Holo was valued at less than one-tenth of a cent. Breaking through the 1-cent barrier on March 27 was a watershed moment for the investors.

The next obvious target would be 2 cents, and the HOT price broke through that level on April 2. In other words, it literally doubled in just a few days’ time.

Then, for a glorious moment, Holo reached the 3-cent mark on April 5. As it turns out, however, that would have been a great time to take profits.

Unfortunately, the price has contracted sharply since that peak. This morning, HOT was trading slightly above the one-penny mark again.

Still, at least we’ve seen how fast and far Holo can move. It’s entirely possible that one piece of good news would send the price back to its prior high point for a 2x or 3x gain.

What’s Hot About HOT

If you’re going to wager on a comeback in the HOT token, you’ll definitely want to know what makes it different from other cryptos.

The first thing you’ll need to know is that the cryptocurrency runs on Holochain. This is an open-source framework on which the users can design fully distributed, peer-to-peer applications.

And here’s the main differentiator and selling point: Holochain works differently than a traditional blockchain. On Holochain, transactions are logged on individual user nodes, not on a public ledger.

As InvestorPlace contributor Vivian Medithi explains, the Holochain network does not rely on cryptocurrency miners or a global ledger for validation.

“That difference makes transactions much faster and increases the general resilience and scalability of the network,” Medithi adds.

Plus, the Holochain network offers an open-source framework, which makes it ideal for building peer-to-peer applications.

A Potent Patent

One thing that really impresses me about Holochain is that the developers actually encourage regular folks to build their own innovative distributed apps on the platform.

This, by itself, isn’t what caused the HOT price to skyrocket in early April, however. Rather, the likely catalyst was the Holochain Foundation securing a U.S. patent on the peer-to-peer networking design.

That design is known as rrDHT, and it involves “a system of nodes communicating according to a relaxed, agent-centric distributed hash table.” If you want to dive deep, check out this post on the Holochain blog.

Interestingly, the Holochain Foundation is being open and cautious at the same time. Here’s what I mean. Holochain will remain an open-source project; that’s one of its most important features, after all.

At the same time, it’s an unfortunate reality that some organization or individual could come along and steal this technology if the Holochain Foundation hadn’t locked in that patent.

Therefore, it’s a smart move for the Holochain Foundation to secure what it calls a “defensive patent” for rrDHT technology.

The Bottom Line

HOT tokens are easily affordable, but that doesn’t mean that anyone should pour their entire account into Holo.

Instead, it’s wiser to take a small position if you believe in the Holochain Foundation’s intriguing alternative to the conventional blockchain.

On the date of publication, David Moadel did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

David Moadel has provided compelling content – and crossed the occasional line – on behalf of Crush the Street, Market Realist, TalkMarkets, Finom Group, Benzinga, and (of course) InvestorPlace.com. He also serves as the chief analyst and market researcher for Portfolio Wealth Global and hosts the popular financial YouTube channel Looking at the Markets.