Bitwise's spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to Near (NEAR) has won approval for a first U.S. listing.

CoinPost, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Sept. 28 that the product cleared key regulatory steps after receiving listing approval from NYSE Arca and having its registration statement declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The ticker is NRR. Trading is likely to begin around Sept. 29. This is the first time a spot NEAR ETF will be listed in the U.S. market.

The product’s key feature is that it not only holds NEAR directly but stakes all of its holdings. It is designed to seek additional yield alongside gains from price increases. The annual management fee is 0.75 percent. About 33 percent of staking proceeds will be deducted for related costs, and the remaining about 67 percent will be added to the trust’s assets.

Its custody structure is also tailored for institutional investors. Coinbase Custody will store the NEAR tokens, and BNY Mellon will handle cash management and administrative work. Bitwise chose a structure that combines large custodians to enhance the product’s credibility.

The initial funding size is still small. Disclosure documents show that as of July 28, 2026, the trust issued only 8 shares priced at $25 per share, with total net assets of $200. Before listing begins, it plans to prepare a seed basket of about 20,000 shares worth about $500,000 to secure operating funds.

Market attention is focusing not only on the ETF structure but also on the logic behind NEAR’s medium- to long-term growth. Near Protocol is a decentralized application (dApp) platform and is highlighting fast processing speed, low fees and a user-friendly design as strengths.

Bitwise’s European unit previously presented end-2030 price scenarios in a NEAR investment report for the second quarter of 2025. In the base case, it saw NEAR reaching about $156, but in the bear case it put the figure at $1.63, showing a wide range. In the bull case, it left room for as high as $562.

The base scenario assumes broader adoption of commercial-scale artificial intelligence (AI) agents. It assumes the number of AI agents worldwide will reach 16.4 billion by 2030, and that 2 percent of them could use NEAR. A more optimistic view envisioned NEAR becoming the dominant payment layer for AI-centric activity and taking on financial automation and B2B task execution.

The bear case, in contrast, cited the expanding influence of centralized AI platforms as a variable. It assumes demand for platforms like NEAR could fall if providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta take control of agent-to-agent coordination through their own interfaces.

As a result, the ETF listing is expected to be a test not only of a new product launch but also of whether the U.S. market is beginning to accept NEAR as an institutional investment asset. A first point to watch will be the scale of actual inflows and how investors respond to the staking-yield structure.