NEAR: Wall Street has found a new favorite cryptocurrency. Should we be excited?
Imagine this: you’re scrolling through the news and see the chief investment officer of one of the largest crypto asset managers say that a coin you’ve only heard of in passing has huge potential. Curious? Let’s break it down without the jargon.
Who’s speaking, and what exactly are they saying?
Matt Hougan, Bitwise’s CIO. His company has just launched the NRR exchange-traded fund in the U.S., which lets you buy NEAR through a regular brokerage account, just like a stock. No wallets or exchanges needed. Hougan explains the appeal simply: NEAR sits at the intersection of two major technology trends, AI and crypto.
What are AI agents, and what do they have to do with money?
The idea is this: soon, each of us will have digital assistants that book, pay, and exchange assets on their own. They need infrastructure, and Bitwise is betting that it will be NEAR. The firm models 328 million such agents on the network by 2030. Hougan honestly acknowledges, though, that most of the activity is still human-driven for now.
Is there anything real behind it?
Yes. The NEAR Intents service has already processed around $30 billion in cross-chain volume. This isn’t just a slick presentation.
Now for the numbers (the most interesting part)
Scenario NEAR price by 2030
Bearish $1.63
Base case ~$155
Most bullish ~$562
In its most bullish scenario, Bitwise compares NEAR to Visa. Put another way, the base case implies roughly 31x growth from the price when the ETF launched, around $5.
A sober view
This is a forecast, not a guarantee. The range—from $1.63 to $562—speaks for itself: even the people who came up with these estimates don’t know how it will all turn out.
Bitwise earns a 0.75% annual fee on the ETF, so it isn’t an objective third party.
After a 175% rally in a month, buying into the hype is risky. The ETF is already trading near its 52-week low, which means some people may have bought at inflated prices amid the excitement.
Don’t confuse the price of NRR fund shares (around $24–27) with the price of the NEAR token itself. They’re different things.
Bottom line: it’s an interesting theme, institutional support is real, but “huge potential” here means “it could grow by dozens of times, or it might not.” If you decide to invest, only put in an amount you can afford to lose without losing sleep.
This is not investment advice: I’m not a financial adviser, and you should double-check the numbers before making any decisions.
