NEAR rallies 125% over 30 days as Bitwise pitches AI, while swap fees pay the bills

NEAR Protocol has been on a 125% run over the last 30 days, riding on a wave of fresh funds entering the network from Bitwise’s new exchange-traded product and rising cross-chain volume. 

The token trading near $5.30 is trending across different data tracking platforms, including CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.

NEAR and Stellar (XLM) have swapped spots multiple times on the market cap log over the last 24 hours, with CoinMarketCap reporting Stellar at $7.03 billion while NEAR is at $6.91 billion. Stellar is on a 1.45% decline over the last 24 hours, while NEAR is up more than 6% as of this report.

The token’s 30-day rally peaked near 135% as it traded above $5.50, a sharp recovery from its $3.59 price level as of September 19. Still, the token is a long way from its all-time high price of $20.44.

Why is NEAR rallying? 

The Bitwise NEAR ETF that launched with the NRR ticker on NYSE Arca on September 29 has been credited for marketing the token to Wall Street investors who would not hold the token under normal conditions. 

The fund, billed as the first of its kind in the United States, charges a 0.75% sponsor fee and stakes nearly all of its holdings, advertising a gross staking rate of 4.91% and a net rate of 3.29%. 

The trust that Bitwise is marketing as an artificial-intelligence play held about 12.3 million NEAR worth roughly $65.4 million as of early October. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said the fund drew $35.5 million in net inflows on its first day.

Talking about NEAR Intents, the private AI infrastructure and AI agent transaction support across blockchains, Matt Hougan, the firm’s chief investment officer, said “The business is already here, and the dream is big and bold.” 

CEO Horsley was even more bullish in a conversation with Bankless, saying NEAR “might be the cheapest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.” The token has gained nearly $1 billion in market cap since that October 5 declaration. 

Why Bitwise is bullish on NEAR

NEAR Intents, the “business” that impressed Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, is a cross-chain protocol where independent market makers, called solvers, compete to fill users’ preferred trade outcome, and has already processed more than $31 billion in cumulative volume. 

That volume feeds a loop where generated fees fund token buybacks. That loop has funded $1.9 million in buybacks against roughly $13 million worth of newly issued NEAR at current prices over the last 30 days. 

NEAR hacker refunds $3.8 million loot 

The nearly 130% token rally over the last month persisted despite an attack that exploited a bug in NEAR Intents’ Omni deposit-and-withdrawal system for about $3.8 million. 

The stolen funds had been returned in full as of October 2, per Cryptopolitan, after general manager Alex Shevchenko opened an encrypted channel with the attacker and set a 48-hour deadline. 

Co-founder Illia Polosukhin said the damage was limited to USDT on the BNB Smart Chain, leaving the NEAR token and core protocol untouched.

That followed a higher-profile test. When hackers behind the roughly $387.5 million Bitget breach tried to push more than $50 million through NEAR Intents, its SHIELD risk layer turned away nearly all of it, with only about $166,000 getting through.

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