Bitwise's NEAR ETF Launches with Bullish $562 Target by 2030

The Bitwise NEAR ETF has launched on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR, marking another milestone in the growth of regulated US crypto investment products. The new fund comes with an annual fee of 0.75% and is available to institutional investors.

Bitwise's research report accompanying the listing presents a bullish case for NEAR Protocol (NEAR), predicting it could reach $562.81 by 2030 under an optimistic scenario. Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan and Head of European Research André Dragosch argue that NEAR's tokenomics are shifting toward serving AI agents, using a conservative SaaS valuation approach to arrive at the target price.

The report presents two possible scenarios for NEAR: a bearish one where it falls to $1.63 if centralized giants like OpenAI prevail, and an optimistic one where it captures 3% of the global AI agent market, reaching the $562.81 target by 2030.

Investors are already assessing potential inflows for the new product, which offers staking of the underlying tokens with a yield of around 5% annually. NEAR ranks second worldwide by active addresses, with 47 million, and is seeing rapid growth in transaction volume through NEAR Intents.