NEAR is entering a new phase in which growing usage across its Intents and artificial intelligence products could translate more directly into value for the token, according to Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan and Sovereign CEO Sal Ternullo.

The two executives made their remarks in a joint appearance on The Rollup podcast, where they laid out the case that NEAR's expanding product suite is beginning to feed into the asset's underlying economics.

Speaking on the show, Ternullo said NEAR is moving toward operating multiple product verticals with product-market fit, all built around a single token economy. Intents is already generating revenue and supporting token buybacks, he noted, while the AI side of the network could become another source of value accrual once it reaches sufficient scale.

“Once we hit the fee switch, hit a scale that makes sense and hit the fee switch on the AI side of this, we probably see the next repricing event in NEAR,” Ternullo said.

Hougan, for his part, said NEAR's existing economics are giving traditional investors a way to value the asset without relying solely on its-term AI ambitions. Revenue and usage from Intents, alongside NEAR's crosschain capabilities, provide evidence of existing product-market fit, he said. The network's AI strategy can therefore be viewed as additional upside on top of the core investment case.

“You can invest in NEAR exclusively on that basis and justify the valuation,” Hougan said, adding that investors effectively get the longer-term AI vision as part of the package on top of the existing investment case.

Bitwise's spot NEAR product

The comments come after Bitwise launched NRR, its spot NEAR exchange-traded product, on NYSE Arca, the New York Stock Exchange's electronic securities exchange. Spot exchange-traded products trade on regulated securities exchanges and track the price of the underlying asset, giving investors exposure through standard brokerage accounts without directly holding the token. The product includes in-house staking — the practice of committing tokens to help operate a proof-of-stake network in exchange for rewards — with rewards designed to accrue to shareholders through the fund's net asset value.

Hougan said Bitwise had been watching NEAR for some time and viewed it as an asset with a potential long-term role in crypto portfolios. He added that the recent growth of Intents has made the investment case easier to quantify. For a long time, investors viewed NEAR largely as a moonshot tied to AI, Hougan said, but the growth of Intents has changed that by providing more visible economics and revenue alongside the longer-term AI thesis.

Supply-side tightening

Ternullo also pointed to changes on the supply side of NEAR's tokenomics. He said the network previously reduced inflation from 5% to 2.5% and began monetizing Intents after the product reached sufficient scale and integration. That revenue is now being used in part to buy back NEAR. Buybacks and lower issuance work on the same side of the token's supply-and-demand equation: repurchases absorb tokens already in circulation, while reduced inflation slows the creation of new ones — dynamics investors often weigh when judging whether rising usage can flow back into an asset.

The ecosystem is now weighing another reduction in issuance. According to Ternullo, a governance proposal published recently would lower NEAR's inflation from 2.5% to 1.6% over a two-year period, slowing the pace at which new tokens enter circulation. He said the objective is to balance growing demand with supply-side changes in a way that improves NEAR's relative value against assets including the dollar and Bitcoin.

Ternullo cited Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange, as an influence on NEAR's shift toward stronger token value accrual, saying its performance showed the market the potential impact of mechanisms that return value to token holders.

A market rewarding fundamentals

Hougan said that shift is part of a broader market that is increasingly rewarding crypto projects based on fundamentals rather than lifting nearly every asset together. For NEAR, he said, the combination of existing product-market fit and a developing AI narrative could prove particularly powerful.

“There's product market fit and there's also narrative market fit,” Hougan said. “And I think when you combine those two, you can get really significant outsized move.”

Ternullo said the next stage will depend on whether NEAR can repeat the path taken by Intents on the AI side — establishing product-market fit, scaling usage and eventually driving value accrual to the token. Reaching sufficient scale to activate an AI fee switch could set up what he described as NEAR's “next repricing event.”