Bitwise Asset Management has launched the Bitwise NEAR ETF under the ticker NRR, making it the first U.S. spot NEAR exchange-traded product. NRR began trading on NYSE Arca on September 29, giving U.S. investors a brokerage-traded way to gain direct exposure to NEAR tokens.
The fund holds NEAR directly and plans to stake its holdings through Bitwise’s institutional staking operation. NRR charges a 0.75% annual management fee, while staking rewards are added to the fund’s net asset value rather than paid separately to investors.
The launch follows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s September 24 effectiveness of the fund’s registration statement and approval by NYSE Arca for the listing.
The future is NEAR.
Introducing $NRR—the Bitwise NEAR ETF—giving investors exposure to the emerging agentic economy.$NRR is the first spot $NEAR ETP in the U.S. and offers in-house staking to maximize NEAR’s ~5% staking rewards.*
Why @NEARprotocol?
↳ Built at the… pic.twitter.com/mdMRSBljz4
— Bitwise (@Bitwise) September 29, 2026
Unlike an ETF based on NEAR futures or other derivatives, NRR is designed to hold the underlying cryptocurrency itself. Its primary objective is to track the value of NEAR held by the trust. Its secondary objective is to generate additional NEAR through staking.
The fund will use the CME CF NEAR Protocol–Dollar Reference Rate – New York Variant to calculate its net asset value. CF Benchmarks calculates the reference rate using trading activity from major NEAR markets.
Source: sec.gov
Staking is one of the more notable features of the new product. Bitwise said it intends to stake NRR’s NEAR through its institutional staking operation. The company cited an annualized NEAR staking reward rate of around 5% as of September 25, although it made clear that this figure can change and should not be viewed as a prediction of the fund’s performance.
Under the arrangement, 33% of the staking rewards generated are allocated to staking-related expenses. The remaining 67% stays with the trust and benefits shareholders through the fund’s net asset value. This staking arrangement is separate from NRR’s 0.75% management fee.
Staking, however, also introduces additional risks. These include possible slashing penalties, technical or operational problems and delays in meeting redemption requests when NEAR tokens are committed to staking. Staking rewards themselves are not guaranteed and can change depending on network conditions.
Coinbase Custody Trust Company will act as custodian for the fund’s NEAR holdings, while BNY Mellon will provide cash and administrative services. Investors will be able to create or redeem shares through authorized participants using either cash or NEAR. Each creation or redemption basket will contain 10,000 shares.
The fund had a small initial seed position before the launch. Bitwise Investment Manager was expected to purchase 20,000 shares for $500,000 as an initial seed basket.
NEAR was trading at around $5 when the ETF began trading, according to CoinGecko data cited in the fund’s launch material. The token was up about 1.7% over 24 hours at the time, with a market capitalization of roughly $6.5 billion.
Bitwise has also pointed to NEAR Intents as an important part of the network’s activity. The company said the protocol had processed more than $32 billion in volume, compared with less than $1 billion a year earlier.
NRR expands Bitwise’s range of single-asset crypto exchange-traded products in the U.S., following products linked to assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid.
The product does come with an important regulatory distinction. NRR is not registered as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940, so it does not have the same protections provided to funds registered under that law.
For investors, the launch marks a new way to hold NEAR exposure through a traditional brokerage account while also gaining indirect exposure to the network’s staking rewards. The key difference is that those rewards remain inside the trust and are reflected in the fund’s value rather than being distributed separately as cash.
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