How to Choose Which Coin to Lend

August 1, 2022

Steps for Choosing a Coin

There are three steps to deciding which coins to lend:

1. Decide which coins you'd invest in anyways.
2. Choose coins with the highest annual yield.
3. Review the utilization rate.

Decide Which Coins You Would Invest In Anyway

Lending out a coin requires that you own the coin in the first place and therefore exposes you to the same upside and downside of investing in the coin. You'll make money if the value goes up and lose it if it goes down. Because of that you'll want answer the same fundamental question that you would if you were going to simply buy and hold a coin: is the coin's value is going to increase or (if the annual yield is attractive enough) at least stay steady during the time you plan to hold it?

How you answer that is up to you but a common way to answer it is with another question: does the coin have a legitimate use that would make it both scarce and highly demanded?

Two Examples

Bitcoin has a fixed supply as is used primarily as "digital gold" - a way to securely store value. As long as people continue to view it as a safe asset like gold it's reasonably to assume that more people will buy it and, because the supply is fixed, the price will go up.

GMT is a coin used by the Stepn app to buy digital sneakers and vote on changes made to the app. It also has a capped supply. If the Stepn app continues to rise in popularity it's reasonable to assume the demand for GMT will increase and therefore it's value will increase as well.

These are simplified examples but illustrate the principle of how to decide.

Note: if you want to learn about a coin you can view each coin's price history, financial details, and uses from within Radiant.

Choose Coins With the Highest Yield

This step is self-explanatory. If you're comfortable investing in the coin in general you may as well get the highest yield available. High annual yield comes from many people wanting to borrow the coin.

Review the Utilization Rate

Utilization refers to how much of a lending pool is currently lent out to borrowers. If the pool becomes 100% utilized you won't be able to withdraw the coins the you've lent out until someone else adds to the pool or some of the borrowed coins are returned.

Your coins are safe in this scenario, you should just be aware of it if you plan on needing to use your coins in the near future.

What questions do you have?

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