Why Did $NEAR Make a Run?
The timing of the entry matters more than size since the trader was in before $NEAR’s biggest catalysts landed. The Bitwise NRR fund, described as the first U.S. spot $NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF), launched on Sept. 29 and pulled in nearly $58 million during its first week. For a token that once required an exchange account to own, that is a new door for brokerage money.
Usage has been climbing alongside price and $NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain swap layer, logged $1.84 billion through the course of September. Cumulative Intents volume is now estimated at $31 billion to $33 billion across more than 30 chains.
Lastly, in terms of supply, a governance change in late 2025 cut $NEAR’s maximum annual inflation from about 5% to roughly 2.5%, and a newer proposal would lower issuance again toward 1.6% over two years. Fewer new tokens and fresh ETF demand is the kind of mix leveraged traders hunt for.
Also, when bitcoin pushed toward $84,000 on Sunday, roughly $7.18 million in $NEAR positions were liquidated, most of them shorts, per a liquidation heatmap shared by Kook Capital.
The Hedge Nobody Mentions
Alongside the $NEAR long, the wallet runs shorts of about $2 million each on BTC, ETH, $SOL, BNB, XRP, $ADA and $AVAX. That adds up to roughly $14.7 million of bets against the large-cap market.
Those shorts are mostly underwater, with the $AVAX short alone showing a loss of about $623,000, $ADA roughly $327,000 and $SOL about $207,000. The bitcoin short was opened at an average of $79,550, so every move in bitcoin’s price toward $84,000 has cost the account money.
In total, the short side is down about $1.33 million, a small fraction of the $NEAR gain.
It is a different style from the all-in directional whales Hyperliquid is known for, as Bitcoin.com News recently tracked an ether whale liquidated for $69 million who reloaded 30 minutes later, and a $32 million bitcoin short betting on the anniversary of last year’s crash.
What Breaks the Trade?
$NEAR would need to fall about 77% from current levels to hit the estimated $1.33 liquidation mark. Still, 10x leverage on a $34 million position means a 10% $NEAR pullback would erase about $3.4 million of the gain in a single move.
Analysts have also warned that $NEAR’s relative strength index has at times pushed above 70 to 80, a zone that often signals overbought conditions. However, historically speaking, ETF flows can reverse as quickly as they arrive.