Bitwise's NEAR ETF Goes Live With $562 Target by 2030

The $NEAR Protocol ($NEAR) blockchain has expanded the lineup of regulated U.S. crypto investment products, following funds focused on Solana and $XRP. Bitwise listed the spot Bitwise $NEAR ETF on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR, with an annual fee of 0.75%.

The main source of debate in the financial community was not the listing itself, but the 40-page research report Bitwise published alongside it. In the report, Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan and Head of European Research André Dragosch presented a mathematical model under which the token could reach $562.81 by 2030 in an optimistic scenario.

How Bitwise calculates a path for $NEAR to reach $562 and catch up with Solana

The market reacted immediately. TradingView's daily $NEAR/USD chart showed a parabolic rise in September 2026, with the price breaking above key moving averages and showing strong momentum near $4.99. The sharp rise suggests that major investors have begun pricing in a new role for the project: a leading "coordination layer" for the emerging global AI economy.

Unlike Ethereum, $NEAR's tokenomics are shifting toward serving AI agents. Using what they describe as a conservative SaaS valuation approach, with a 50x price-to-sales multiple, the analysts calculated a $562.81 target in their Max Case scenario for 2030. This would require the network to capture 3% of the global AI agent market, or about 950 million agents, and serve them much as Visa serves payments.

Performance comparison of $NEAR Protocol and key Bitwise crypto ETFs, Source: TradingView

If centralized giants such as OpenAI prevail instead, the report sets out a bearish scenario in which the token falls to $1.63.

Investors are already assessing potential inflows by looking at other Bitwise products. Cumulative net inflows currently stand at $1.23 billion for the Bitwise Solana fund, $677 million for the Bitwise $XRP fund and $148 million for the ecosystem-focused Bitwise BHYP.

Against this backdrop, the $NEAR product occupies a distinct AI-crypto niche and offers staking of the underlying tokens with a yield of around 5% annually.

Given that $NEAR ranks second worldwide by active addresses, with 47 million, and is seeing rapid growth in transaction volume through $NEAR Intents, analysts expect the new product to have a chance of eventually matching $XRP's pace of attracting capital.

The listing gives institutional investors a way to make a long-term bet on whether control of AI will shift from Silicon Valley to decentralized networks.