NEAR Protocol has climbed 125% over the past 30 days, riding a wave of fresh capital entering the network through Bitwise's newly launched exchange-traded product and rising cross-chain volume. The token, changing hands near $5.30, is trending across major data tracking platforms including CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.

Over the past 24 hours, NEAR and Stellar (XLM) have swapped positions on market capitalization rankings multiple times, with CoinMarketCap reporting Stellar at $7.03 billion and NEAR at $6.91 billion. Stellar declined 1.45% during that period, while NEAR was up more than 6% as of this report.

The 30-day rally peaked near 135% as the token traded above $5.50, a sharp recovery from the $3.59 level it held on September 19. Even so, NEAR remains a long way from its all-time high of $20.44.

Why NEAR is rallying

The momentum has been credited to the Bitwise NEAR ETF, which launched under the ticker NRR on NYSE Arca on September 29 and has marketed the token to Wall Street investors who would not hold it under normal conditions. Billed as the first product of its kind in the United States, the fund charges a 0.75% sponsor fee and stakes nearly all of its holdings, advertising a gross staking rate of 4.91% and a net rate of 3.29%.

The trust, which Bitwise markets as an artificial-intelligence play, held about 12.3 million NEAR worth roughly $65.4 million as of early October. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said the fund drew $35.5 million in net inflows on its first day.

Speaking about NEAR Intents — private AI infrastructure and AI agent transaction support across blockchains — Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said, "The business is already here, and the dream is big and bold."

Horsley went further in a conversation with Banklesshttps://www.bankless.com/read/bitwise-is-pitching-near-to-wall-street-as-an-ai-bet), saying NEAR "might be the cheapest thing you've ever seen in your life." The token has gained nearly $1 billion in market cap since that October 5 declaration.

Why Bitwise is bullish on NEAR

NEAR Intents, the "business" that impressed Hougan, is a cross-chain protocol where independent market makers, called solvers, compete to fill users' preferred trade outcomes. It has already processed more than $31 billion in cumulative volume, per its [explorer.

That volume feeds a loop in which generated fees fund token buybacks. Over the last 30 days, the loop has financed $1.9 million in buybacks against roughly $13 million worth of newly issued NEAR at current prices. Together, these figures provide separate metrics to track: activity through NEAR Intents, the relationship between buybacks and new issuance, and the ETF's reported holdings and inflows.

Hacker returns $3.8 million loot

The nearly 130% rally over the past month persisted despite an attack that exploited a bug in NEAR Intents' Omni deposit-and-withdrawal system for about $3.8 million. The stolen funds had been returned in full as of October 2, per Cryptopolitan, after general manager Alex Shevchenko opened an encrypted channel with the attacker and set a 48-hour deadline.

Co-founder Illia Polosukhin said the damage was limited to USDT on the BNB Smart Chain, leaving the NEAR token and the core protocol untouched.

That followed a higher-profile test. When hackers behind the roughly $387.5 million Bitget breach tried to push more than $50 million through NEAR Intents, its SHIELD risk layer turned away nearly all of it, with only about $166,000 getting through.

Source: Cryptopolitan