An ETF for robot payers. In October 2021, the United States finally opened the door to crypto ETFs by authorizing Bitcoin futures ETFs. Since then, numerous ETFs associated with cryptocurrencies have emerged. On Tuesday, September 29, Bitwise launched the listing of the Bitwise NEAR ETF on the NYSE Arca, under the ticker NRR. The American manager with $9 billion in assets has signed the first spot product backed by NEAR on American soil. He also plans to stake the fund’s tokens himself.
The bet is based on a thesis still unfamiliar to Wall Street. Clearly, AI agents will soon pay and arbitrate for us. McKinsey estimates this agentic commerce to be worth up to $5 trillion by 2030.
Key Points
Bitwise brings NEAR to NYSE Arca via the NRR fund, the first US spot product on this network
The issuer will stake the tokens held via its institutional team, for network rewards close to 5.3% per year, of which 33% covers staking fees.
At 0.75% per year, NRR costs almost four times more than the house's Bitcoin and Solana vehicles
Network Intents Protocol has processed over $32 billion in cumulative volume
Bitwise’s NEAR ETF arrives on the NYSE with in-house staking
Few know it, but NEAR was initially an artificial intelligence start-up. Its co-founder Illia Polosukhin also co-authored Attention Is All You Need, the 2017 article at the origin of Transformers and ChatGPT. Subsequently, the project switched to blockchain, before returning to AI through autonomous agents. The idea: agents capable of booking, paying and exchanging for us, on a fast, inexpensive infrastructure and without a single depository.
On Tuesday, September 29, Bitwise announced the listing of the Bitwise NEAR ETF on the NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR. This is the first American cash fund backed by this network. In addition, the issuer intends to stake the tokens itself in order to amass staking rewards.
Fees are set at 0.75% per year. Or approximately four times the price of its Bitcoin (BITB) and Solana (BSOL) ETFs, both charged 0.20%. A considerable difference for an investor who would keep his shares for several years. This additional cost is generally observed on assets with lower capitalization. Liquidity and operational costs actually work against the manager.
Bitwise will stake the fund's NEAR internally, rather than delegating the operation to a third-party validator. The tokens will, however, remain held by Coinbase Custody. The annualized yield of NEAR staking stood at around 5.3% at the end of September, according to onchain metrics.
NRR is Bitwise's sixth single-asset ETP in the United States, following Bitcoin (BITB), Ethereum (ETHW), Solana (BSOL), XRP and Hyperliquid (BHYP) funds. In Europe, the house is already marketing a NEAR ETP with staking approved by the German BaFin. This pace owes a lot to the generic listing standards adopted by the SEC in the fall of 2025. They removed the case-by-case review. As a result, a wave of products backed by altcoins has since swept the American market.
NEAR Intents, $32 billion in volume for the AI agent economy
The choice of NEAR also owes a lot to the career of its founders. Illia Polosukhin is among the eight signatories of “Attention Is All You Need”, the article published by Google in 2017. This text introduced the Transformer architecture, the technical basis of ChatGPT and almost all current language models.
The heart of the offer is called NEAR Intents. The user expresses a desired outcome, such as exchanging bitcoin for another asset. Solvers then take care of finding the least expensive execution, including between different chains. Settlement takes place through smart contracts rather than a centralized bridge. Bridges have concentrated most of the big DeFi hacks in recent years, from Ronin to Wormhole. The protocol has processed more than $32 billion in cumulative volume, up from around $5 billion at the end of 2025.
“NEAR sits at the intersection of two of the biggest technology trends, AI and crypto. As AI agents begin transacting on our behalf (booking, paying, redeeming and more), the world is going to need a fast, trustworthy settlement infrastructure that doesn't rely on a single custodian. NEAR's flagship product, NEAR Intents, already shows what this looks like in practice, and we believe NRR provides an easy way for investors to gain exposure to this construct before it goes mainstream. »
Matt Hougan, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer
NEAR has six years of uninterrupted activity, a finality of around 1.2 seconds and fees of less than a cent. The capitalization exceeds $6 billion and the entire offer is unlocked. Furthermore, inflation was reduced from 5% to 2.5% after a community vote. Revenues generated by network products fund token redemptions. “NEAR is the vertically integrated stack of the future AI + blockchain: AI is the front end, blockchain is the back end,” summarizes the co-founder of the protocol.
NRR is also the most expensive product in Bitwise's American range. At the current rate, network staking yields around 5.3% per year. Once the 33% withholding has been deducted, the remainder remains significantly higher than the 0.75% management fee.
