Bitwise has launched what it says is the first US spot exchange-traded product designed to track NEAR, giving investors regulated exposure to the token via a fund that trades on NYSE Arca. The product, branded as the Bitwise NEAR ETF, trades under the ticker NRR.
According to Bitwise, NRR charges a 0.75% management fee and will hold NEAR directly. Bitwise also said it plans to stake a significant portion of the fund’s NEAR holdings, positioning the ETF to potentially benefit from staking economics alongside spot exposure.
Key takeaways
- Bitwise launched NRR, a US spot NEAR ETF trading on NYSE Arca.
- NRR charges a 0.75% management fee and will hold NEAR directly, with Bitwise intending to stake a large share of assets.
- Bitwise links the timing to rising usage of NEAR Intents, Bitwise citing $32B+ in transaction volume versus under $1B a year earlier.
- Bitwise expects AI agents to become a bigger driver for NEAR activity, while noting most current network activity remains human-driven.
- NEAR Intents recently highlighted security activity, reporting it blocked assets tied to the Bitget hack.
Spot NEAR access comes to NYSE Arca
The launch marks another step in Bitwise’s expansion of single-asset crypto ETFs in the US. The firm said NRR joins its existing lineup tracking major digital assets, including Bitcoin (BITB), Ether (ETHW), Solana (BSOL), XRP (XRP) and Hyperliquid (BHYP).
For investors, the practical change is access. Instead of buying and managing NEAR directly, participants can gain exposure through a listed product subject to traditional brokerage and ETF infrastructure. The decision to hold NEAR directly—rather than using derivatives-based replication—also matters for investors focused on spot exposure, while staking plans may add a second layer of potential value generation.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told Cointelegraph that the firm has been preparing the US NEAR ETF since launching a European NEAR exchange-traded product in June 2025.
NEAR’s momentum and what Bitwise says is changing
Cointelegraph reports that the timing of the ETF launch is coming as NEAR has seen strong market performance. CoinGecko data cited in the article shows NEAR gained about 167% over the past month to trade around $4.94 on Tuesday, and is up roughly 81% year-to-date.
However, Bitwise’s case for NRR is not limited to price action. Hougan pointed to a growing narrative around AI agents as a potential use case for NEAR. He said Bitwise has already seen evidence of agents using the network and expects activity to increase over time, even while acknowledging that most activity on NEAR today is still driven by humans.
That matters because it frames the investment thesis around ecosystem demand rather than purely speculative flows. If AI agents increasingly generate machine-to-machine transactions that require liquidity, routing, and cross-chain coordination, networks and protocols built for that workflow may see sustained usage.
NEAR Intents’ growth highlights cross-chain demand
Bitwise attributes a major portion of the current attention to NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain transaction approach. The firm said activity on the Intents protocol has surged, with transaction volume rising to more than $32 billion—up from less than $1 billion a year ago.
NEAR describes Intents as a system where users (and, potentially, autonomous agents) express a goal for a transaction, while third-party solvers compete to execute it across supported blockchains. Hougan told Cointelegraph that this aligns with how large language models and intent-based systems naturally operate—goal-focused rather than step-by-step—while also reducing complexity for agents that would otherwise need to navigate bridging and other cross-chain mechanics.
He also emphasized that cross-chain usability has historically been difficult for users and expensive in time and cost. By shifting execution to solvers and abstracting away some of the bridging complexity, Intents aims to make cross-chain actions more straightforward—an issue that has constrained broader adoption across crypto for years.
AI agents, stablecoins, and why “structural catalysts” are back
The broader backdrop for Bitwise’s argument is institutional interest in AI-driven transactions. Last week, BlackRock said in a research paper that AI agents could increase demand for stablecoins, cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets as machine-to-machine activity becomes more common.
In that same research discussion, BlackRock framed AI as a possible “structural catalyst” for digital asset adoption, citing the suitability of programmable assets for high-frequency, low-value transactions that can run around the clock.
Within that context, NEAR’s push toward AI in 2024 and its subsequent emphasis on cross-chain infrastructure and autonomous agents is designed to capture a specific kind of demand—transactions that can be specified as goals and executed efficiently across networks.
NEAR Intents also recently drew attention for security-related performance. The protocol said it blocked more than $50 million in attempted transfers tied to the $387.5 million Bitget hack. Bitwise’s broader point is that, as usage grows, reliability and safety become part of the value proposition for anyone—human or automated—attempting to move assets across chains.
What to watch next for NRR and NEAR Intents
With NRR now trading, the key question for investors is whether ETF flows and staking mechanics translate into sustained interest in NEAR’s ecosystem—particularly NEAR Intents as AI agent activity expands. Readers should watch next for continued growth in Intents volumes, evidence of agent-driven usage scaling beyond today’s human-dominant activity, and how the market values NEAR exposure through a regulated wrapper.
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