Bitwise Asset Management Files for a Spot Near Protocol (NEAR) Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Bitwise Asset Management is continuing to expand its crypto ETF offerings.

The firm has filed for a spot bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a May 6 registration statement.

The proposed Bitwise NEAR ETF will seek to track the market price of NEAR, excluding management fees. The filing did not disclose the potential ticker symbol, the planned stock exchange listing, or the fee structure. It also listed Coinbase Custody as the fund’s potential custodian.

To move forward, Bitwise must submit a 19b-4 form to the SEC, a necessary step to formally initiate the regulatory review process. The firm indicated plans to do so when it registered a statutory trust for the NEAR ETF in Delaware on April 28.

The SEC now faces a busy docket, with over a dozen spot crypto ETF proposals pending review in 2025. These include filings tied to altcoins such as Solana, Dogecoin, Litecoin, XRP, Cardano, Chainlink, Hedera, Avalanche, Aptos, Polkadot, and Sui.

A frontrunner in the crypto ETF space, Bitwise also has pending applications for spot DOGE, SOL, and XRP ETFs. It currently offers approved spot bitcoin and ether ETFs, both trading on NYSE Arca since March. The two funds have attracted a combined $2.35 billion in net inflows since launch.

At no. 44 on CoinGecko's ranking of cryptocurrencies by market cap, NEAR is valued at $2.73 billion. It powers the Near blockchain, a Layer-1 network sometimes branded as a potential "Ethereum killer."

Near has set out to tackle the so-called "blockchain trilemma" by aiming to balance security, scalability, and decentralization. The network uses Nightshade sharding technology to achieve up to 100,000 transactions per second, supported by 265 active validators, according to data from Nearblocks.io.