News about NEAR

The article argues NEAR Protocol could outperform Bitcoin in 2027, after Bitcoin soared more than 40% in Q3 while NEAR rose 173% over the past 90 days and nearly 200% for the year. The author says NEAR is a Layer-1 blockchain built for the AI agent economy and is now the top AI crypto with a $6 billion market cap, ahead of Bittensor at $3 billion and Venice Token at $1 billion. Risks cited include an AI bust that could hit NEAR hard and a shift in the AI agent narrative, as happened to Virtuals Protocol, which fell sharply in 2025 after being a top performer in 2024. Supporting factors include a spot NEAR ETF launched in September and protocol revenue being used for token buybacks, while the author suggests Bitcoin investors may have to settle for annualized returns of around 10%.

Over the past 14 days, TAO fell 12.9% to about $251 and NEAR dropped 19.4% to about $4.53, while Bitcoin lost only 3.7%. The selloff followed a tech-stock slide on October 22, when Meta fell about 7% on AI spending concerns despite beating revenue expectations, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.6%. Investors moved to safer assets, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.97%, while Brent crude rose 4% to around $113 per barrel. Because TAO and NEAR are closely tied to AI sentiment, they have been hit harder than Bitcoin, and NEAR, up 204.5% in 2026, had more gains to lose. TAO also faces supply pressure from token emissions, even after the December 2025 halving cut daily issuance in half. Trading volume on October 25 was the lowest since the selloff began on October 7, suggesting sellers may be tiring.

NEAR Protocol's price rose 15.8% from 4 p.m. ET on Friday to 3 p.m. ET on Monday. NEAR Intents handled a record $4.8 billion of swaps in September, and part of the resulting fees funds NEAR token buybacks. A governance proposal to cut annual token issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over two years still needs validator approval. Traders betting against NEAR had about $6.5 million of short positions forcibly closed in a single day, which the article describes as a short squeeze. The price has more than doubled over the past month, helped by the Sept. 29 launch of the Bitwise NEAR ETF, the first U.S. spot exchange-traded product tracking the token.