Bitwise’s spot NEAR exchange-traded fund began trading on NYSE Arca on Monday, September 29, becoming what the asset manager called the first spot NEAR ETP in the United States, Bitwise announced the same day. The Bitwise NEAR ETF trades under the ticker NRR and carries a 0.75% annual management fee, adding a sixth single-asset fund to the firm’s U.S. exchange-traded lineup.
From listing approval to first trading day
The debut comes days after NYSE Arca approved the Bitwise NEAR ETF for listing, a step Bitwise secured when it registered NRR shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission through a Form 8-A in late September. Bitwise said the U.S. fund builds on its European business, where a BaFin-approved staking NEAR ETP already trades, and framed the launch as the first time U.S. investors can gain spot exposure to the NEAR Protocol through an exchange-listed vehicle. The firm, which reported $9 billion in client assets as of June 30, already lists Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid ETFs.
Staking and a 0.75% fee
Bitwise intends to stake the fund’s NEAR tokens in-house through its institutional staking team, targeting NEAR’s average staking rewards of roughly 5% as of September 25. Those rewards accrue to shareholders as increases in net asset value and are not guaranteed, the firm cautioned. “NEAR sits at the intersection of two of the biggest trends in technology: AI and crypto,” said Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan, who argued that AI agents will need settlement infrastructure that is “fast, trustworthy, and doesn’t depend on a single custodian.”
An AI-economy pitch, not a proven result
NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin framed the listing as a route for U.S. investors to back what he called “the vertically integrated stack for the AI + blockchain future.” Bitwise pointed to NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain transaction protocol, which the firm said has processed more than $32 billion in volume, and to a McKinsey projection that global agentic commerce could reach $5 trillion by 2030. Bitwise added that NEAR has a market capitalization above $6 billion, that its entire supply is unlocked, and that its inflation was recently halved to 2.5%. The token’s recent run-up, which saw NEAR roughly double in a week in late September, gives the launch an additional tailwind. Bitwise’s growth figures and the agentic-commerce projections remain company claims, not realized results.
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