Bitwise’s spot NEAR exchange-traded fund cleared its final exchange-level hurdle, with NYSE Arca approving the listing application in a Form 8-A filing dated September 24. The registration puts the fund one step away from becoming the first US spot ETF tied to the NEAR Protocol, though no first trading date has been set.
The filing, signed by Bitwise chief operating officer Teddy Fusaro, registers the shares under Section 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. It states that an application for listing “has been filed with and approved by NYSE Arca, Inc.” and points back to the trust’s S-1 registration statement under file number 333-286995. The shares are expected to trade under the ticker NRR.
Staking built into the fund
The structure stands out among crypto ETF filings. The trust intends to stake all of its NEAR holdings under normal conditions, seeking extra yield on top of price exposure. Staking expenses will absorb 33 percent of the additional NEAR generated, leaving the trust with roughly two-thirds of the rewards.
Coinbase Custody Trust Company safeguards the underlying tokens. The fund will hold an unstaked liquidity reserve only when redemptions or expenses demand it, and the prospectus says the trust currently plans to stake 100 percent of holdings.
The management fee is set at 0.75 percent a year. Bitwise Investment Manager is expected to buy an initial seed basket of 20,000 shares for $500,000, with proceeds used to acquire NEAR at or before listing. The trust’s earliest financial statement showed eight shares at $25 each, or $200 in net assets as of July 28, a placeholder balance typical of pre-launch filings.
The prospectus also names Attestant, an affiliate of the sponsor, as a preferred candidate for the staking agent role. The sponsor must diligence validator performance and security procedures before allocating staked NEAR, and the trust can move tokens between staking agents as needed.
How the approval process works
The exchange approval is a separate step from SEC approval of the securities themselves. The prospectus states plainly that the SEC has neither approved nor disapproved the offering. Shares will list “subject to notice of issuance,” which leaves the launch timing open.
Bitwise filed its original S-1 on September 16, and the pace has been quick by ETF standards. CoinGape reported the fund could begin trading next week if remaining certification steps and required filings land on schedule.
Price tracking will follow the CME CF NEAR-Dollar Reference Rate New York Variant, calculated by CF Benchmarks from trading on Coinbase, Crypto.com and Kraken. The variant measures the dollar price at 4:00 p.m. ET rather than the London time used by the original CME index. A real-time companion index updates once per second.
NEAR price reacts first
Markets moved ahead of the launch. NEAR jumped about 20 percent in 24 hours around the approval news and traded near $5, while futures open interest climbed to roughly $1.49 billion. The move suggests traders are positioning ahead of a listing rather than waiting for one.
What staking changes for ETF holders
Staking inside an ETF wrapper has become a recurring feature in newer crypto fund applications after earlier products launched without it. The yield comes with trade-offs the prospectus spells out. Staked NEAR is subject to the protocol’s unbonding period, which delays redemptions. Validator failures, smart contract bugs and slashing can reduce the reward stream. A change in applicable law can also pause the staking program.
The fee stack matters too. The 0.75 percent sponsor fee sits on top of the 33 percent share of staking rewards routed to staking expenses. Investors comparing the fund against direct token holdings should count both.
For NEAR, a spot ETF gives the layer-1 token a regulated wrapper for US investors who cannot hold tokens directly. Custody sits with a regulated trust company rather than an exchange account, and shares trade in a brokerage account like any other listed security.
The wider altcoin ETF queue
The listing adds NEAR to a growing set of altcoin ETFs working through the US system. Bitwise has pushed aggressively on the filing front this year, and the NEAR product follows the same template the firm used for earlier single-asset funds: regulated custody, a CME reference rate for pricing, and a seed basket funded by the investment manager before launch.
Where NEAR differs is the all-in staking posture. Most prior altcoin ETF filings keep staking partial or optional. Committing to stake 100 percent of holdings, even with a liquidity reserve carve-out, is a bolder design that depends on the protocol’s unbonding mechanics staying manageable for daily creation and redemption flows.
The SEC’s stance on staking in ETF wrappers has softened over the past year, with several funds gaining approval to stake a portion of holdings. A fund staking essentially everything will be watched as a test of how far the model can go.
The liquidity reserve deserves a closer look as well. The prospectus lists the situations in which the trust may hold unstaked NEAR on a temporary basis: assets received through creations that have not yet been deployed, tokens held back to pay expenses, coins bought or sold for cash creations and redemptions, staking rewards awaiting redeployment, tokens borrowed under contingent liquidity arrangements, and holdings set aside during a wind-down. In each case the trust commits to return the tokens to staking as soon as reasonably possible. How often the reserve gets used in practice will depend on creation and redemption volume, and early flows will be the tell.
Watch for a notice of issuance from NYSE Arca and confirmation that the registration is effective. Those, not the exchange approval itself, will mark the actual first trading day. The filing sets no date, so the launch window remains an estimate until the exchange publishes one.