Bitwise Launches First US Spot Near ETF After Token Nearly Triples Since August

In brief

• Bitwise's Near ETF began trading Tuesday on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR, with a 0.75% annual fee. Bitwise calls it the first spot NEAR product in the U.S.
• Near traded around $5.09 on Binance on Tuesday, roughly triple its August lows around $1.60.
• The fund plans to stake its Near to chase average rewards of about 5%, which Bitwise says are not guaranteed.

Bitwise began trading its Near ETF on Tuesday, giving U.S. investors a way to bet on the AI-focused Near blockchain from an ordinary brokerage account. The fund trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR and charges a 0.75% annual fee, according to Bitwise.

Bitwise calls it the first spot Near fund in the U.S. "Spot" means the fund holds actual Near tokens rather than futures contracts, which are bets on where the price goes next.

An ETF is a fund you buy and sell like a stock. For anyone who never wanted a crypto exchange account or a wallet, that is the whole appeal: the tokens sit inside the fund, and the shares show up next to everything else in your brokerage app.

The timing is hard to miss, especially conisdering Near has been on a roll lately, skyrocketing since May.

It is not the first spike this year. Near jumped 28% in 24 hours in May on privacy, AI and scaling upgrades, then slid back toward $2 over the summer. Near currently trades for just above $5 at a $6.5 billion market capitalization. To put that in perspective, though, the token is still down some 75% from its all-time high above $20.