By cryptoadmin $NEAR is entering a new phase in which growing usage across Intents and AI products could translate more directly into value for the token, according to Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan and Sovereign CEO Sal Ternullo.
Speaking on The Rollup podcast, Ternullo said $NEAR is moving toward having multiple product verticals with product market fit built around a single token economy. Intents is already generating revenue and supporting buybacks, while the AI side could become another source of value accrual once it reaches sufficient scale.
“Once we hit the fee switch, hit a scale that makes sense and hit the fee switch on the AI side of this, we probably see the next repricing event in $NEAR,” Ternullo said.
Hougan said $NEAR’s existing economics are giving traditional investors a way to value the asset without relying solely on its longer term AI ambitions.
He said revenue and usage from Intents, alongside $NEAR’s crosschain capabilities, provide evidence of existing product market fit. The network’s AI strategy can then be viewed as additional upside.
“You can invest in $NEAR exclusively on that basis and justify the valuation,” Hougan said, adding that investors effectively get the longer term AI vision on top of the existing investment case.
The comments come after Bitwise launched NRR, its spot $NEAR exchange traded product on NYSE Arca. The product includes in house staking, with rewards designed to accrue to shareholders through net asset value.
Hougan said Bitwise had been watching $NEAR for some time and viewed it as an asset with a potential long term role in crypto portfolios. He said the recent growth of Intents has made the investment case easier to quantify.
For a long time, investors viewed $NEAR largely as a moonshot tied to AI, Hougan said. The growth of Intents has changed that by providing more visible economics and revenue alongside the longer term AI thesis.
Ternullo also pointed to changes on the supply side of $NEAR’s tokenomics.
He said the network previously reduced inflation from 5% to 2.5% and began monetizing Intents after the product reached sufficient scale and integration. That revenue is now being used in part to buy back $NEAR.
The ecosystem is now considering another reduction in issuance. Ternullo said a governance proposal published recently would lower $NEAR inflation from 2.5% to 1.6% over a two year period.
He said the objective is to balance growing demand with changes on the supply side in a way that improves $NEAR’s relative value against assets including the dollar and Bitcoin.
Ternullo cited Hyperliquid as an influence on the shift toward stronger token value accrual, saying its performance showed the market the potential impact of mechanisms that return value to token holders.
Hougan said that shift is part of a broader market increasingly rewarding crypto projects based on fundamentals rather than lifting nearly every asset together.
For $NEAR, he said the combination of existing product market fit and a developing AI narrative could be particularly powerful.
“There’s product market fit and there’s also narrative market fit,” Hougan said. “And I think when you combine those two, you can get really significant outsized move.”
Ternullo said the next stage will depend on whether $NEAR can repeat the path taken by Intents on the AI side by establishing product market fit, scaling usage and eventually driving value accrual to the token.
He said reaching sufficient scale to activate an AI fee switch could set up what he described as $NEAR’s “next repricing event.”