Bitwise NEAR ETF (NRR) opens on NYSE Arca with in-house staking

Bitwise Investment Advisers launched the Bitwise NEAR ETF, ticker NRR, on NYSE Arca on September 29, 2026, making it the first US spot exchange-traded product offering direct exposure to NEAR, according to The Block. The fund charges a 0.75% management fee, stakes its NEAR in-house, and routes rewards to shareholders through the fund's NAV rather than as a separate distribution. The SEC Form CERT filed with the exchange on September 28 confirms the launch.

What launched

NRR is a spot ETF: the trust holds NEAR tokens directly, not a futures wrapper. The prospectus (Form 424B3, filed with the SEC) frames the product with a primary and secondary objective:

• Primary: exposure to the price of NEAR held by the trust, less expenses.
• Secondary: derive additional NEAR through staking.

The staking mechanism is the differentiator against filings that preceded it. NRR runs its own validators — "in-house" staking, in Bitwise's language — rather than routing through a third-party staking provider. Rewards accrue to the trust as additional NEAR, which then flow to shareholders through daily NAV rather than as a separate cash or in-kind distribution. Bitwise is targeting ~5% of average staking rewards captured through the trust, per the prospectus disclosures cited in The Block's coverage.

The fund joins Bitwise's existing spot lineup — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and its Hyperliquid product — and inherits the same operational skeleton (creation/redemption in NEAR, transparent daily holdings, custodian-held tokens).

Why in-house staking matters

Most spot crypto ETFs launched to date either did not stake at all, staked passively through custodians, or delegated to institutional validator operators. Running validators in-house means the trust:

• Chooses its own validator set and slashing exposure.
• Captures the full protocol-level reward rather than sharing a fee with an external operator.
• Owns operational risk directly, including cluster downtime that would show up as reduced NAV growth rather than as a distributed distribution shortfall.

For NEAR specifically, staking is not optional to keep pace with the token's inflation schedule — an unstaked spot fund would underperform staked baselines mechanically. That's the same math that pushed the Solana and Ethereum ETP applicants to file staking amendments in 2025 and 2026; NRR is Bitwise applying the pattern to NEAR at launch rather than as a retrofit.

Numbers block

• Ticker: NRR
• Exchange: NYSE Arca
• Management fee: 0.75%
• Launch: September 29, 2026
• Sponsor / manager: Bitwise Investment Advisers, LLC
• Staking: in-house, ~5% average reward capture (per prospectus)
• Reward mechanism: accrues to NAV (no separate distribution)
• SEC filings: Form CERT (NRR092826), Form 424B3, preceding S-1/A amendments filed July–September 2026

What to watch

1. Effective yield after fees. With a 0.75% expense ratio and ~5% target reward capture, the net contribution to NAV depends on validator uptime and NEAR's active inflation rate. Track quarterly reports.
2. Creation/redemption behaviour on staked tokens. Unstaking on NEAR has a delay; how Bitwise sizes an unstaked liquidity buffer versus staked assets will determine whether NRR trades tight to NAV under stress.
3. Copycat filings. A launched, staking, single-asset alt-L1 ETF at 0.75% is now a template. Expect follow-on filings for other proof-of-stake L1s using the same structure within weeks.

Context

NRR extends a run of single-asset alt-L1 ETFs approved after the Ethereum staking rulings earlier this year. It's the fifth non-BTC/ETH spot product in Bitwise's US lineup after Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid, and the first to launch with staking baked in at the SEC-effectiveness date rather than added by amendment. NEAR traded around $4.93 with a market cap near $6.5B at the time of listing, per The Block.