Bitwise has launched the first US spot NEAR exchange-traded fund, a staking product trading on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR with a 0.75% expense ratio. The asset manager is marketing the token as a way to bet on AI agents, the software programs that transact and pay for services on blockchains without human involvement.
The fund holds NEAR, the native token of the Near Protocol blockchain, and stakes a portion of its holdings to earn yield on behalf of shareholders. Staking rewards are passed through after fees, a structure Bitwise has used on its earlier staking products for ether and solana. Investors buy and sell the shares through ordinary brokerage accounts, getting exposure to a token that until now required a crypto exchange or self-custody wallet.
Part of a wider altcoin ETF wave
The launch extends a run of altcoin ETF listings that has picked up pace through September. REX Shares and Osprey Funds set an October 23 effective date for their staked SEI ETF last week, and US spot Solana ETFs took in a record $188 million in the week to September 25, with all seven funds posting net inflows. XRP funds have accumulated about $1.08 billion in assets after two straight positive sessions, even as bitcoin and ethereum funds saw money leave in recent days.
NEAR was one of the larger tokens without a US listing vehicle. The token trades near $2.20 with a market cap of roughly $2.7 billion, well below the tier of assets that anchored the first wave of altcoin ETFs. Bitwise has argued the smaller size is the point: the fund gives US investors early exposure to a chain whose main growth story, agent-to-agent payments, has not yet produced the transaction volumes that would show up in revenue or fee data.
The AI agent pitch
Bitwise’s thesis rests on the idea that autonomous AI agents will need payment rails that work around the clock, without bank accounts or card networks. An agent that books flights, buys compute or pays another agent for data cannot open a checking account, so the argument goes, and stablecoins on public chains are the natural substitute. Near has leaned into this narrative, with its protocol team building intent-based transaction routing and chain abstraction tools designed to let software wallets move value across chains without manual approvals.
The pitch faces an obvious objection: AI agent volumes remain tiny compared with human trading activity, and most agent payments today run through stablecoins on Ethereum, Solana or Tron rather than NEAR. There is no public data showing Near has captured a meaningful share of agent-to-agent settlement. Bitwise has also not disclosed how much of the fund’s NEAR will be staked, and staking yield on the network has run in the mid single digits annually, a modest return once the 0.75% fee comes out.
How the staking structure works
In a staking ETF, the issuer delegates a share of the fund’s tokens to validators who secure the network and earn new token issuance plus transaction fees in return. That yield accrues to the fund and shows up in the share price over time, minus fees and any taxes on the rewards. The structure carries extra risks a plain spot fund does not: slashing penalties if a validator misbehaves, unbonding delays when the fund needs to sell tokens to meet redemptions, and the operational risk of running staking infrastructure at scale. Bitwise has used third-party institutional staking providers on its earlier products rather than running validators itself.
Flows have favored the majors
The broader ETF market has rewarded large-cap tokens more than mid-caps so far. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $2.39 billion in the week to September 25, their largest weekly haul since October 2025, pulling 2026 flows back into positive territory. Ethereum funds have been choppier, with outflows in the most recent sessions while XRP products bucked the trend. Bitcoin traded near $83,000 on Tuesday, under pressure from Treasury yields at their highest levels since 2007 and Brent crude above $105 a barrel.
Against that backdrop, a mid-cap token fund is a bolder ask. NRR launches into a market where investors are trimming risk, not adding it, and where the biggest funds have absorbed most of the new money. Altcoin exposure through ETFs has so far been concentrated in solana and XRP, both with far deeper liquidity than NEAR.
What it means for Bitwise and the market
Bitwise manages roughly $15 billion across its crypto and index products. Its earlier staking ETFs, including the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF, have gathered assets steadily since listing, though none has reached the scale of BlackRock’s IBIT or Fidelity’s FBTC. The firm has pending filings for other single-token funds, and a NEAR listing suggests the SEC’s faster review process under its current leadership is reaching further down the market cap ladder than most observers expected a year ago.
For the Near ecosystem, the listing is a stamp of mainstream legitimacy even if flows stay small. Token projects have treated US ETF approval as a signal to exchanges, custodians and corporate treasuries that the asset is investable through regulated channels. Whether that translates into demand depends on whether the AI agent narrative converts into real transaction volume on Near. For now, the fund gives US investors a regulated wrapper on a token they previously could only buy on offshore or crypto-native venues, and a first data point on whether ETF buyers will follow the story down the market cap ladder.