Bitwise's staked NEAR ETF gathers $58 million in three days, 61% of it on the first

Day one's $35.5 million of net inflows was roughly twice the $15 million to $20 million a day that changed hands on the exchange in the first two sessions ^[3][5][14]. Net inflows measure new shares the fund creates. Volume measures shares traded between investors. A gap that wide probably means a handful of large creation orders made up more of the opening than individual tickets did. The article does not identify the buyers.

About 61% of the three-session total came on the first day, and day three's roughly $9 million was about a quarter of day one's ^[13]. On the podcast, Horsley put the three days at "something like 50 million" ^[18]. The fund page's Oct. 1 holdings were about $4.3 million below Bankless's flow tally ^[15]. A move in NEAR's price over those sessions could explain a gap that size.

Both people making the AI case have a commercial stake in NEAR. Ternullo is CEO of SVRN, a Nasdaq-listed NEAR treasury company ^[11]. Bitwise, by his account, helps operate the multi-party signing network behind chain signatures, which is what NEAR's Intents system is built on ^[10]. Bitwise's pitch leans on the founder and the AI use case ^[21]. "We've moved on from the CoinMarketCap era," Horsley said ^[20]. Measured against AI platforms with traction, NEAR at about $6 billion "might be the cheapest thing you've ever seen in your life," he said ^[22]. Ternullo compared NEAR with AI startups that have raised money before shipping a product, at post-money valuations close to the $2 billion to $3 billion NEAR was worth four months ago ^[23].

The cash Bitwise points to is a buyback. Intents takes a cut of swap volume, and the net revenue goes to buying back NEAR ^[1]. Horsley called that kind of value capture "revenue by another name" ^[1]. For now, Bitwise earns little from the fund itself. A 0.75% sponsor fee on $53.4 million is about $400,000 a year ^[17].

Advisers new to crypto buying the AI pitch would show up as creations that keep coming in smaller, steadier amounts. Crypto-native money moving into a staked wrapper would look different, with flows close to zero within weeks. A buyer base drawn by yield would follow the staking rate more than AI news. In my view the three sessions show that a roughly $6 billion token with staking attached can raise about $58 million in a U.S. wrapper ^[12][22]. They do not yet show that the AI pitch made the sale. The best counter-argument is Horsley's claim that NRR's start beat some of this year's debuts for bigger-cap assets ^[19]. Buyers sorting by market cap would have done the opposite. A run of net outflows, or early holder filings dominated by trading firms, would count against the AI reading.