Just came back here to post again, to say that I reconsidered and decided to buy some RDN after all :)
Got a handful during the dips.. not too much since I didn't want to give up other positions too much, but there seems to be so much momentum behind this I decided to try and ride the train :)

After doing my research, I've learned that in order to set up useful payment channels, node operators will need to stock up on a huge amount of RDN tokens. And I think Raiden will be widely adopted (although remain somewhat controversial), so there should be a bunch of people stocking up on RDN making the price go up!

By the way, you should have a look at Loopring/LRC. It's not like Raiden much, but it operates on a similar token proposition: node operators stocking up on LRC tokens in order to profit maximally, as well as all fees being paid in LRC tokens. Da Hongfei of NEO is an advisor, has a superstar team, the NEX decentralized exchange will be using Loopring protocol for starters too. I am bullish on it, and don't understand why most 'experts' haven't discovered this one yet! Maybe the project is too hard to grasp for most