NEAR Cracks the Top 20: Why Bitwise’s Matt Hougan Is Paying Attention

Despite criticism that humans still dominate NEAR's user base, Hougan sees value in its growing Intents business. NEAR Protocol’s native token has been on an absolute tear. While the rest of the crypto market’s momentum cooled, NEAR held on to its rally. It pushed into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap this week after posting around 125% gains in the last 30 days before correcting earlier today. According to Bitwise’s Matt Hougan, NEAR stands out because its big AI vision is backed by a business that is already generating real activity and revenue. AI Ambition NEAR rose 198% in the third quarter, well ahead of Bitcoin and Ethereum. But for Hougan, the bigger story is what the project is building and how that business is developing. NEAR calls itself “the blockchain for AI.” Its long-term goal is to become the infrastructure for AI agents that can transact with each other and interact with the wider world. The main criticism is also clear. NEAR is not actually being used mainly by AI agents today. Its users are still mostly humans. But that has not stopped one of its products from gaining serious traction, Hougan said. NEAR Intents has now processed more than $30 billion in ...