Bitcoin News Today: Bitcoin's Bull Run and NEAR's AI Gamble: A Tale of Two Crypto Futures

Bitcoin's price has surged past $124,000 as of late August 2025, signaling a strong bullish trend in the cryptocurrency market. This performance has been mirrored in related financial instruments such as the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) and the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB). These ETFs closely track the price of Bitcoin, providing investors with an alternative to holding the cryptocurrency directly. The iShares ETF, for example, has historically followed Bitcoin’s price with a modest annual fee of 0.25% managed by BlackRock, while BITB is currently trading at $63.295 as of August 22, 2025 [1].

Alongside Bitcoin, the NEAR Protocol, a blockchain platform focused on AI applications, has shown notable activity. As of late August 2025, NEAR was trading at around $2.67, with a market cap of $3.34 billion [2]. The platform has positioned itself as a leader in the blockchain and AI convergence by offering high-performance infrastructure for decentralized applications and intelligent agents. NEAR combines User-Owned AI, Intents and Chain Abstraction, and a sharded blockchain architecture to create a scalable and low-cost execution environment. The NEAR Protocol, which launched in October 2020, has demonstrated considerable volatility, with a 52-week range between $1.81 and $8.22. In the last 30 days alone, NEAR's price has dropped by approximately 5%, underperforming the broader crypto market [3].

The NEAR Protocol’s Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) mechanism and Nightshade sharding allow the blockchain to handle around 100,000 transactions per second. This architecture supports scalability by dividing the network into shard chains that operate in parallel. NEAR's supply dynamics are also notable: with a circulating supply of 1.25 billion tokens against a max supply of 1 billion, the platform currently experiences an annual supply inflation rate of 15.70%. This inflation, while high, is offset by the platform’s growing use cases and technological innovations [4].

Investor sentiment toward NEAR appears neutral, with a Fear & Greed Index score of 53 and a volatility rating of 5.81%. Despite its recent downturns, NEAR continues to attract attention from developers and investors due to its focus on AI-native applications and its strategic positioning within the Web3 ecosystem. The platform’s performance has been characterized by sharp fluctuations, with a peak of $20.42 in early 2022 and a trough of $0.52 in late 2020 [5].

Bitcoin and NEAR are both being viewed through the lens of broader macroeconomic and regulatory developments. Bitcoin’s rise has coincided with increasing institutional adoption and the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, which have added a layer of regulatory confidence to the asset class. Meanwhile, NEAR benefits from the ongoing innovation in decentralized infrastructure and its alignment with AI advancements, which are reshaping the digital economy. While Bitcoin's future is largely tied to macroeconomic trends and regulatory clarity, NEAR’s trajectory depends on continued development in its AI-focused use cases and adoption by the developer community.

Market observers suggest that Bitcoin’s long-term value is supported by its fixed supply and growing institutional interest, despite short-term volatility. For NEAR, the key to sustained growth lies in its ability to deliver on its AI-driven blockchain promise while managing supply inflation and market expectations. Investors considering either asset should weigh these factors alongside their own risk tolerance and investment horizon.

[1] title1 (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/where-ishares-bitcoin-trust-etf-112300218.html)

[2] title2 (https://www.gemini.com/prices/bitwise)

[3] title3 (https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/assets/near-protocol-near/)

[4] title4 (https://coincodex.com/crypto/near-protocol/)

[5] title5 (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/near/usd)