Two firms are approaching the same corner of the digital-asset market from opposite directions. Bitwise, the crypto index and ETF specialist, has brought a NEAR Protocol exchange-traded fund to market, while SVRN has set out an ambition to accumulate 10% of the token’s total supply. In separate remarks to Bitcoin.com News, executives from both firms described the shared conviction behind those moves: that blockchains built for high-throughput, low-cost computation stand to capture a meaningful share of demand generated by artificial intelligence workloads.
The Bitwise product matters less for what it holds than for who can now hold it. A NEAR ETF routes exposure through standard brokerage and advisory channels, meaning allocators who cannot or will not open a crypto-native wallet can still express a view on the network. That structure has become the dominant on-ramp for institutional money in this cycle, and Bitwise has been among the most active issuers pushing single-asset and thematic funds into that channel. The pitch to advisors is straightforward: a token tied to a secular technology theme, wrapped in a familiar, custody-solved vehicle.
The Accumulation Strategy
SVRN’s approach is more aggressive. Chief executive Sal Ternullo has described an intent to build a position equal to roughly a tenth of NEAR’s supply, a scale that would make the firm one of the token’s most consequential holders if executed. Accumulating that much of any liquid asset requires patience and careful execution, since large purchases move prices against the buyer. It also raises governance questions, because a holder of that size can influence network decisions in ways a passive ETF investor cannot.
The two strategies are complementary rather than competing. Bitwise monetizes the theme through management fees on assets it gathers; SVRN monetizes it through balance-sheet appreciation on tokens it accumulates. Both depend on the same underlying bet, and both would be validated or invalidated by the same forces: developer activity on the network, real usage of its compute and storage capacity, and whether AI-adjacent demand actually settles on public blockchains rather than centralized cloud providers.
Why the AI Infrastructure Thesis Resonates
The narrative has gained traction because the economics of AI are increasingly constrained by infrastructure rather than by model quality. Training and inference require enormous amounts of compute, storage, and coordination, and the firms supplying those inputs have seen their valuations re-rate accordingly. Crypto networks that position themselves as decentralized alternatives for compute markets, data availability, or agent-to-agent payments are attempting to attach themselves to that same spending curve. NEAR has marketed itself in precisely those terms, emphasizing scalability and developer tooling.
Skeptics make a fair point: most AI workloads still run on conventional cloud infrastructure, and decentralized networks have yet to demonstrate they can compete on reliability and cost at scale. The bull case rests on a narrower claim, that a slice of the market, particularly for permissionless coordination and verifiable computation, will migrate on-chain over time. That is a bet on a multi-year transition, not a near-term revenue story.
What to Watch
None of this guarantees that the AI-infrastructure framing will produce returns. Thematic investing has a long history of drawing capital to a compelling story before the underlying fundamentals arrive. What Bitwise and SVRN have done is place two distinct wagers on the same question, and the market will spend the coming quarters grading them.
Source: news.bitcoin.com