Bitwise Launches the First U.S. Spot NEAR ETF With Staking Built In

Bitwise has opened a new route into NEAR for U.S. investors, launching the first spot exchange-traded fund in the country built around the network’s native token.

The Bitwise NEAR ETF trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR. It holds NEAR directly and is designed to stake a substantial portion of those tokens, giving the fund a different economic profile from a product that simply stores an asset and waits for the price to move.

Cointelegraph reports that NRR carries a 0.75% management fee and arrives after a sharp run in the token. The launch gives traditional brokerage customers regulated spot exposure without requiring them to manage a crypto wallet or interact directly with staking infrastructure.

Bitwise has worked on the U.S. fund since launching a European NEAR product in June 2025. NRR joins its single-asset U.S. lineup covering Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid.

The source report says NEAR Intents volume has climbed above $32 billion from less than $1 billion a year ago. Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan sees AI agents as a growing use case, although most current network activity still comes from people.

The prospectus structure matters because staking can turn the fund’s underlying holdings into productive assets. Rather than leaving all of its NEAR idle in custody, the trust can commit tokens to the network and collect protocol rewards.

One current breakdown of the filing says Coinbase Custody holds the assets and the trust keeps roughly 67% of the staking rewards after expenses. That can add value over time, but it also means investors should watch the operational terms instead of treating NRR as a simple copy of a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Bitwise published the final prospectus for a spot NEAR ETF. Ticker NRR on NYSE Arca, dated September 24.

Custody is Coinbase Custody. The trust stakes its NEAR and keeps about 67% of the rewards. That part is standard for staking ETFs now, Bitwise runs the same structure on… pic.twitter.com/03vhfW5Aob

— Vadim (AI, ⋈) (@zacodil) September 25, 2026

Bitwise has experience with staking-oriented products, but NEAR gives the model a fresh test. The network is pushing deeper into cross-chain transactions and AI-agent activity through NEAR Intents, which is meant to let users move value across chains without navigating each network separately.

NEAR’s rally into the launch means NRR is not arriving in a quiet market. The token rose more than 160% over the preceding month, according to the source report, as trading activity and interest in the network accelerated.

This is an absolutely great chart of $NEAR.

The good part is that it's just getting started, as this is the first leg upwards of this entire leg.

Let's go. pic.twitter.com/KTzwuoWAXi

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) September 27, 2026

That momentum is encouraging, but it raises the bar for the fund’s debut. The meaningful measurements now are trading volume, assets gathered, actual staking participation and whether demand persists after the launch-day excitement fades.

NRR broadens access to NEAR at a time when proof-of-stake funds are starting to compete on more than price exposure. If investors embrace the staking component, the product could become a useful test of how much traditional markets value native crypto yield alongside the underlying token.

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