NEAR Jumps 30% as $36M Bitwise ETP Adds Weight to AI Token Thesis
Summary
NEAR token surged about 30% to an intraday high of $2.25, lifting market capitalization briefly past $2.9 billion after news of a Bermuda public services partnership and institutional inflows. The European Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP recorded a $3 million inflow, bringing assets under management to $36 million and signaling growing institutional interest. Near Protocol plans to deploy a dynamic resharding upgrade in June to scale infrastructure for high-frequency AI agents and enable automatic real-time data load splitting. Some industry skeptics warn the protocol may struggle to capture market value because of distribution, developer mindshare, and potential commoditization of features like chain abstraction, as well as pressure on fees from intense solver competition.