Key facts
- Bitwise CEO Matt Hougan sees NEAR as a crypto asset with both an existing business and significant AI upside.
- NEAR Intents has processed over $30 billion in cumulative volume.
- Thirty-day NEAR Intents volume grew 896% year-over-year to over $4 billion.
- Thirty-day NEAR revenue grew 512% year-over-year to over $2 million.
- Bitwise launched a U.S. spot NEAR ETF that includes staking rewards.
- NEAR Protocol (NEAR) rose 6.23% to $5.38 in 24 hours.
The price of NEAR Protocol's native token, NEAR, surged 6.23% to $5.38 in the past 24 hours, extending a rally that has seen it gain over 130% in the last 30 days. The upward movement followed comments from Bitwise CEO Matt Hougan, who identified NEAR as a promising smaller-cap cryptocurrency with significant potential for growth driven by artificial intelligence.
Hougan highlighted that NEAR stands out because it possesses both an established operating business and a forward-looking AI vision. He pointed to NEAR Intents, the network's settlement engine, which has processed over $30 billion in cumulative volume. In the past 30 days, NEAR Intents handled more than $4 billion in volume, marking an 896% year-over-year increase, while revenue exceeded $2 million, up 512% from the previous year.
Bitwise described NEAR as building an infrastructure for AI-scale commerce, aiming to support transactions between AI agents as they become more prevalent in digital markets. NEAR Intents allows users or AI agents to specify desired outcomes, with network solvers handling the execution. This structure is envisioned as a flywheel, where increased AI agent activity drives more settlement demand on the NEAR Protocol.
The network has also expanded its capabilities beyond crypto transfers, integrating with Ondo Finance to facilitate cross-chain access to tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs through NEAR Intents.
Hougan emphasized that NEAR's AI ambitions are not solely dependent on future expectations, as the existing blockchain business provides a solid foundation. He suggested that if AI agents become dominant users of digital infrastructure, NEAR could benefit significantly by serving as their settlement layer.