Bitwise Lists First US Spot NEAR ETF, NRR, With 0.75% Fee on NYSE Arca

Bitwise Lists NRR on NYSE Arca

Bitwise Asset Management's spot Near (NEAR) exchange-traded fund began trading Tuesday on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR, the first US spot product built around the AI-focused layer-1 token. The fund charges a 0.75% annual fee — $75 per year on each $10,000 invested — and holds actual NEAR tokens rather than futures contracts, so brokerage customers can gain direct exposure without opening a crypto exchange account or self-managing a wallet.

NRR stands out because it stakes. Bitwise's in-house team will stake the fund's NEAR to capture average network rewards of about 5%, which accrue to shareholders as a rising value per share. The firm's disclosures caution the rewards are not guaranteed and carry slashing risk — the penalty a validator pays for breaking network rules — while a single-asset fund can lose a significant part or all of its value.

The launch rides a strong tape. NEAR changed hands near $5.09 on Binance at publication, roughly triple its August lows around $1.60, with a market capitalization near $6.5 billion; the token remains down roughly 75% from its all-time high above $20. Near's co-founder Illia Polosukhin co-created the Transformer architecture behind modern AI models, and Bitwise's thesis leans on AI agents — software that pays, books and transacts on a user's behalf, increasingly through an AI crypto wallet. The firm also cites Near Intents, its cross-chain swap service that competes with intent-centric routing protocols such as dappOS, as having processed more than $32 billion in volume. Bitwise filed Delaware paperwork for the fund in April 2025, when NEAR traded at $2.61, and Grayscale moved to convert its NEAR trust into an ETF in January 2026 with the token near $1.54. The path cleared in September 2025, when the SEC's generic listing standards allowed exchanges to list qualifying commodity-based trust funds without case-by-case approval — the decision that later produced Litecoin, Hedera and Solana ETFs, including Bitwise's Solana staking fund.

Cboe and S&P DJI Extend SPX Deal

Cboe Global Markets and S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Monday a 25-year extension of their exclusive licensing agreement covering Cboe's S&P 500 Index (SPX) options, locking in exclusivity through 2051. The clause traders noticed sat further down the release: the two firms said they “may collaborate on innovation beyond traditional index derivatives, including products such as tokenized options contracts.”

No tokenized product, timeline or mechanics were announced — tokenized options are a permitted direction under the deal, not a launched product. The scale behind the prospect is nonetheless significant. SPX options rank among the world's most actively traded index derivatives, with a record 970.6 million contracts changing hands in 2025, an average of 3.9 million per session, according to figures Cboe disclosed; S&P DJI's benchmarks underpin investment products measured in trillions of dollars. S&P DJI CEO Catherine Clay said investor demand for US equity exposure “continues to accelerate.”

Tokenization moves traditional assets — stocks, funds, credit — onto blockchain rails, where they can trade around the clock, settle faster and circulate between trading, lending and collateral systems. For options, collateral can sit onchain while the strike price and expiration are encoded into a smart contract, letting settlement execute automatically against market data and trimming intermediaries — an efficiency play that echoes the design goals of decentralized finance.

The infrastructure buildout around this model is already visible: Nasdaq is developing tokenized, voting-enabled equities with Kraken parent Payward; the New York Stock Exchange is building a 24/7 venue for tokenized stocks and ETFs; and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which custodies more than $100 trillion in assets, plans to launch its DTC tokenization service in October. S&P DJI has licensed its flagship benchmark onchain before — to Centrifuge for SPXA, the first blockchain-based index fund it authorized, and to Trade[XYZ] for a 24/7 perpetual futures product trading on Hyperliquid. Cboe CEO Craig Donohue said the extension provides “significant runway to pursue the next frontier of innovation.” Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

From Spot ETFs to Tokenized Derivatives

The SEC press release we reviewed states that national exchanges may list and trade shares of commodity-based trusts meeting the Commission's established criteria without a separate approval for each product — the plumbing that made NRR's same-day listing possible. Read alongside the Cboe–S&P DJI extension, one arc stands out for our desk: regulated wrappers are absorbing digital-asset exposure in both directions. Spot ETFs pull tokens into ordinary brokerage accounts, while tokenized derivatives push TradFi benchmarks onto public blockchains, from base layers to layer-2 networks. Neither announcement guarantees a product ships, but the frameworks are now in place, and issuers on both sides are positioning for an on-chain market that never closes.