NEAR Protocol’s native token has rallied sharply as Bitwise’s spot NEAR exchange-traded fund moves into the final stretch before a possible US listing.
After NYSE Arca approved the listing application and the SEC declared the registration statement effective on September 24, 2026, the product—expected to trade under the ticker NRR—could begin trading around September 29.
The fund is structured to hold NEAR tokens directly rather than derivatives. Its secondary objective is to stake the entire position so that shareholders receive staking rewards in addition to price exposure.
Coinbase Custody will safeguard the tokens in segregated accounts, BNY Mellon will handle cash and administration, and the annual sponsor fee is 0.75 percent.
Creations and redemptions occur in 10,000-share baskets, which means new demand can translate into actual purchases of NEAR on the open market.
Because staked tokens are subject to an unbonding period, coins acquired by the trust are unlikely to return quickly to exchange order books.
Market participants responded immediately.
NEAR climbed from the mid-$4 range to a recent high near $5.44 before consolidating around $5.14–$5.24.
The token is up roughly 20 percent over the past week and more than 175 percent over the past month, with year-to-date gains approaching 250 percent in some calculations.
Futures open interest simultaneously reached $1.56 billion—the highest reading in nearly three years of available data—indicating that leveraged traders have added substantial new positioning alongside the spot rally.
Bitwise itself has published long-term scenarios that place a 2030 base-case price near $156 and a bull-case figure above $560, though these projections come from the product’s sponsor and should be viewed in that light. Independent analysts have cited similar ranges, but they remain speculative.
Even as regulated vehicles attract fresh capital, many traders and long-term holders continue to favor direct ownership of the underlying tokens.
Direct holdings allow participation in network governance, staking outside an ETF wrapper, and use of the asset across decentralized applications.
That preference has not stopped both crypto-native and traditional-finance investors from increasing their overall exposure to the expanding universe of digital-asset ETFs.
The product pipeline has continued to grow under a regulatory climate that the current administration has described as more supportive of financial innovation.
The listing itself is not an endorsement of NEAR or of the security.
Early creation and redemption data, once the fund begins trading, will offer a clearer picture of whether institutional demand is durable or merely a short-term reaction to the headline. Until then, the combination of a staking-enabled structure, rising futures positioning, and a scheduled launch date has already produced one of the more notable altcoin moves of recent weeks.
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