NEAR Surges 11% Amid BTC Rally and Growing Deflationary Narrative

The price of NEAR Protocol (NEAR) surged by approximately 11% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. This significant increase can be attributed to a combination of factors, including a broad market short squeeze led by Bitcoin and a growing narrative around deflationary tokenomics.

As Bitcoin rose from the mid-$60,000s to the mid-$70,000s in two days, with over $4 billion of shorts liquidated across the market, NEAR's price climbed from around $1.72 to about $1.90. The altcoin market cap also saw a 3-4% increase during this period.

A widely circulated analysis on social media platform X highlighted that at a NEAR price around $1.75, roughly $158,000 per day of buy pressure would be needed to neutralize annual issuance of about 33 million NEAR. The same thread noted that the NEAR Intents product had processed over $134 million in volume in a single day, implying around $268,000 in daily protocol fees, exceeding that issuance requirement.

The analysis framed this as NEAR generating fees at about 1.7 times the value of daily issuance and stated it had been happening for several days, portraying NEAR as potentially becoming net-deflationary if such volumes persist.