Alan Rogers
Full-Time Crypto Trader
NEAR looks headed higher, with quantum-ready accounts adding to its technology case: co-founder Illia Polosukhin says users can update their account keys to be post-quantum today without moving assets. x.com x.comÂ
NEAR Protocol's launch of private perpetuals trading powered by Hyperliquid is building serious momentum for both NEAR and HYPE. Traders can now open positions without publicly exposing every move, and NEAR rose more than 80% in the seven days after the launch. x.comÂ
NEAR feels like an older, inflationary tech coin that has had its time in the sun, even if the case makes some sense on paper. A post the author replies to describes selling all NEAR and rotating into Zcash and Hyperliquid because conviction in it never grew. x.comÂ
Agent payments and AI infrastructure make AI crypto one of the strongest early-bull-market narratives. Coinbase's x402 is the clearest signal: agents made 138 million-plus Base transactions, mostly under 10 cents. Bittensor subnets earn outside revenue; Render and Akash supply GPU power; NEAR builds agent rails. Grayscale's AI crypto sector rose 54% in September vs roughly 24% for the broader market. Still early and volatile; rotation may follow if Bitcoin holds a base and the narrative sticks. … Show more
NEAR should be valued as a well-rounded layer-1 rather than for one use case, since its intents do not generate meaningful revenue and their network effects are relatively weak. Judged that way it is strong, with good governance, technology and economics, and it is time for the good L1s to rise. x.comÂ
NEAR can never be money, so any monetary or privacy premium ascribed to the token will flow to permissionless neutral protocols like Zcash and, to a lesser degree, Monero. NEAR's freezing of funds from the Bitget hack was the right business decision, but it shows that programmability creates governance surface area that is antithetical to money. The NEAR chain made about $150k in 30 days, Intents $1.7M and perps $61k, an insane multiple for something that isn't money. x.com x.com x.comÂ
NEAR's buyback flywheel is turning: NEAR Intents had its biggest revenue week ever last week, and $500,000 of NEAR was bought back. x.comÂ
NEAR could benefit from a fragmented crypto market because Intents earns fees on crosschain liquidity, with some revenue buying NEAR. Intents processed $34.2B across 37 chains; its buyback wallet holds about 1.4M NEAR. Confidential TVL reached $150.3M, up 345% in 90 days, and its 30-day volume share rose to 29%. Private execution could attract larger participants; fee-paying demand from AI agents remains unproven. These on-chain metrics support more appropriate repricing. x.com x.comÂ
NEAR's $2.4 billion market cap already prices it as a major AI and apps layer, so the success of NEAR Intents does not justify the valuation. Intents is a strong bridging product and handled over $200 million of volume in about a day, per @andyyy, but it earns only about $1.5 million in annualized revenue, and valuing NEAR as a bridge is not very bullish. This may be a midcurve take. x.comÂ
Actual use of NEAR Intents, including private swaps, is a bigger positive sign for NEAR than ETF inflows. BSC News reports $5.22 million into Bitwise's NEAR ETF in the latest week; that is still small money. x.comÂ