Radiant price shoots up by 15% following a $10 million investment from Binance Labs

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of Binance, made a crucial investment in Radiant, which led to a sudden surge in the value of its native token RDNT. While the investment in itself is not a big deal, the idea behind it matters more to the crypto ecosystem, especially given the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is going after everyone and everything.

Binance invests in Radiant

Binance Labs made a $10 million investment in cross-chain lending and borrowing protocol Radiant Capital this week. As the news spread, investors flocked to get their hands on Radiant’s native token RDNT, probably mainly driven by FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Consequently, the altcoin’s value shot up in the last couple of hours, rising by almost 15%.

RDNT/USD 1-day chart

At the time of writing, Radiant price is seen hovering around $0.318, after hitting a 45-day high of $0.3240. While the extent of the impact of Binance’s investment is expected to be till this point, looking at the bigger picture, it may be far bigger.

To start with, Binance Labs made the decision to be involved in the lending protocol at a time when the SEC is already pursuing them with a lawsuit for violating Securities Laws. Secondly, the SEC has not been kind to lending in the crypto space either. An example of the same exists in the lawsuit it filed against Gemini and Genesis at the beginning of this year in regard to their lending program.

Given the SEC finds itself not tethered to any regulatory guidelines, nothing is stopping the agency from potentially going after Binance Labs regarding this investment as well.

The second bigger impact is rather positive for Radiant as the $10 million investment will be used in expanding collateral and expanding to the Ethereum mainnet. Ethereum, at the moment, is not only the biggest DeFi chain in the world but is also home to some of the biggest lending protocols in the world – Aave and Compound Finance.

Thus, Radiant’s expansion to Ethereum would prove to be of benefit to RDNT token holders. As is, the lending protocol is growing at a remarkable rate. The total value locked (TVL) on it has increased by nearly 25% in the last 30 days from $216 million to $272 million.

Radiant TVL

This is expected to rise further now that the protocol would exist on not just Arbitrum and Binance Smart Chain but also Ethereum.

Read more - Gemini and Genesis charged by SEC for violating Securities law using the Earn program