Bitwise lists first U.S. spot NEAR ETF, passing staking rewards to investors

Bitwise, a U.S. crypto asset manager, listed the Bitwise NEAR ETF, a spot fund that directly holds NEAR Protocol's NEAR token, on NYSE Arca on Sept. 29 (U.S. time) under the ticker NRR. The company said the product is the first spot NEAR exchange-traded product (ETP) in the U.S. and that rewards earned by staking the fund's NEAR will go to investors.

Each share started with 5.2 NEAR

According to the fund's website, NRR's inception date was Sept. 28. As of Sept. 27, the fund had 20,000 shares outstanding and net assets of about $500,000. That money bought 104,384.13 NEAR, putting 5.219207 NEAR in each share, and the net asset value (NAV) per share started at $25.

Coinbase Custody Trust holds the NEAR, and the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) serves as fund administrator. NAV is calculated daily using the CME CF Benchmark Reference Rate for NEAR, a time-weighted average of prices traded between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time.

Staking rewards build up in NAV, not as payouts

Staking means locking up tokens on a network to help validate transactions in exchange for newly issued tokens. Bitwise runs the staking through its own institutional staking team rather than an outside provider. The share set aside as a liquidity reserve was 0% as of Sept. 28, meaning the fund stakes effectively all of its NEAR. The company resets the reserve ratio each month.

The fund's website lists the NEAR network's annual staking reward rate at 4.87% (90-day average) and the net rate after fees and other costs at 3.26%. The press release put the annualized rate at about 5% as of Sept. 25. Rewards are not paid out in cash; they are added to the fund's assets and raise NAV per share. Conversely, because the management fee is paid by selling NEAR held by the fund, the amount of NEAR represented by each share will decline over time regardless of price, Bitwise said in its risk disclosures.

"As AI agents start transacting on our behalf—booking, paying, swapping, and more—the world is going to need settlement infrastructure that's fast, trustworthy, and doesn't depend on a single custodian."

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise

From Europe to the U.S.

Bitwise already runs a NEAR staking ETP in Europe approved by Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), and the listing extends that product line to the U.S. In the U.S., NEAR joins Bitwise's single-asset spot ETFs for bitcoin (BITB), ether (ETHW), Solana (BSOL), XRP (XRP) and Hyperliquid (BHYP). Bitwise had $9 billion in client assets as of June 30.

In the press release, Bitwise said NEAR has a market capitalization of more than $6 billion, its entire supply is unlocked, and its annual inflation (new issuance rate) was recently halved to 2.5%. It added that NEAR Intents, NEAR's cross-chain transaction protocol, has processed more than $32 billion in cumulative volume, up from under $1 billion a year earlier. "The Bitwise NEAR ETF offers a broader base of U.S. investors the opportunity to invest in this vision," said Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol.

Upbit price near 6,700 won, kimchi premium near zero

NEAR is listed on the Korean won markets of both Upbit and Bithumb. At 7:33 a.m. KST on Sept. 30, NEAR traded at 6,705 won on Upbit and 6,715 won on Bithumb. At the same time, NEAR traded at $4.937 on Binance, up 4.18% over 24 hours, or about 6,706 won when converted, leaving the kimchi premium (the gap between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets) effectively at 0% on Upbit. Upbit's 24-hour NEAR trading value was about 48.3 billion won.

On Binance daily candles (UTC), NEAR opened at $4.27 on Sept. 22, rose as high as $5.578 intraday on Sept. 27 and closed at $4.823 on Sept. 28. At the same time, the funding rate on Binance's NEAR perpetual futures was 0.01%, around the default level.