NEAR Claims Crown in Crypto's Pivot to AI: Wintermute

The crypto market, lacking similar fundamental support, saw weekly outflows of $679 million from spot Bitcoin ETFs (the highest since June) and $542 million from Ethereum ETFs, while CoinGlass recorded forced liquidations of $1.19 billion ($1.06 billion of them longs). Bitcoin dropped 3.2% (to $83k), while Ethereum plunged 7.0% due to a reputational shock: an Ethereum Foundation researcher publicly urged users to migrate to new addresses immediately.

But the largest damage was done elsewhere.

The market's new favorite. How $NEAR ignored the general storm

The main blow fell on the altcoin sector, where the median decline was 3.7% and the recent leader UNI collapsed by 15.8%. Of the 66 largest projects, only 11 closed in the green.

However, this crisis exposed an important trend: investors did not flee to fiat but changed narratives. Capital leaving classic DeFi platforms began actively flowing into tokens tied to artificial intelligence technologies.

Near became the absolute leader of the movement. Historically positioned as an AI-oriented blockchain, the project effectively ignored the market storm and, after a symbolic dip, claimed leadership in the sector, continuing its aggressive growth.