Asset manager Bitwise has made its next move in a bid to offer a NEAR ETF, filing its S-1 form with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This development provides a bullish outlook for the Near Protocol price, with institutional investors gaining exposure to the altcoin through this fund.
Bitwise Registers NEAR ETF Filing With US SEC
A SEC filing shows that Bitwise has registered its proposed NEAR ETF with the US SEC. This move is part of the plans to launch a fund that will directly track the value of the Near Protocol price and provide investors with exposure to the altcoin.
This comes following the asset manager’s registration of the Near Protocol ETF in Delaware. Following this filing, the firm will now move to file a 19b-4 form for the ETF with the Commission through an exchange. This will officially kickstart the approval process as the exchange declares its intention to list and trade the fund on its platform.
The Commission already has several filings for other altcoin ETFs on its desk, including ones from Bitwise. Bitwise has already filed for Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, and Aptos ETFs.
However, the SEC has shown it is in no hurry to approve these funds despite the regulatory-friendly environment that the Commission has created under this new administration. The agency has so far delayed its decision on all other crypto ETFs, with the latest being Canary Capital’s Litecoin ETF filing.
Insight Into The Altcoin’s Current Price Action
Amid Bitwise’s NEAR ETF filing, crypto analyst Lycus has provided insights into the Near Protocol’s current price action. He remarked that the altcoin’s price appears to be stabilizing above the $1.75 support zone.
The analyst added that if it can reclaim the $3.70 resistance, there could be a price surge towards the $5 level. Lycus affirmed that the NEAR price is showing strong support and advised market participants to wait for a small wick around $2.65 if they are planning to accumulate.
Coinbase and PayPal have expanded their partnership to offer free conversions between PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD, and US dollars.
This is to enhance the utilization of stablecoins in digital payments, which is a positive development both for firms in their attempt to adopt blockchain technology within the conventional financial markets.
Coinbase Partners with PayPal to Support Stablecoin Usage
PayPal and Coinbase have teamed up to offer zero-fee conversions for PYUSD on Coinbase’s platform. So, from now on, it is possible to buy, sell, and trade PYUSD without fees on the platform. Furthermore, Coinbase users will be able to exchange their PYUSD 1:1 for US dollars. This arrangement seeks to demystify the stablecoin and ensure that its use is feasible in day-to-day activities.
PayPal’s president and CEO, Alex Chriss, also praised the partnership, saying,
“We are thrilled to advance new, exciting, and innovative use cases with Coinbase and the broader crypto ecosystem, with PYUSD at the core of it and focusing on adding value and more utility to Digital currencies for developers, customers, and other consumers.”
The move also includes more support for the merchants. PayPal also plans to bring PYUSD to its global network of merchants, which could expand the utility of stablecoins in real-world transactions. Amid these developments, the crypto exchange Coinbase filed with the CFTC to launch XRP futures earlier this month, offering a regulated way for investors to gain exposure to XRP.
Increased Utility for Coinbase Customers
Coinbase’s involvement is invaluable since it provides a direct gateway to millions of potential customers. With this new partnership, the crypto exchange plans to incorporate PYUSD into its services to provide users with a quick means of exchanging USD for PYUSD without incurring a fee. This zero-fee applies to Coinbase’s retail usage and also applies to institutional clients.
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, highlighted the benefits of this partnership for the broader cryptocurrency community, stating,
“Their more than 430 million consumer and merchant accounts offer an unprecedented opportunity to increase stablecoin adoption globally.”
This will also serve institutions which have already embraced crypto to get more out of PYUSD, thus making stablecoin make more rounds in business-to-business transactions.
Expanding DeFi and Digital Payments Applications
While PayPal and Coinbase are working on enhancing the fiat to stablecoins gateway, they are also considering expanding in decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain payments. These two firms have agreed to develop new applications for PYUSD within these sectors to ensure that the digital currency is not restricted to just the financial sector alone.
According to Lauren Abendschein, Global Head of Institutional Sales at Coinbase,
“This is a partnership that is all about advancing the future of global payments, taking stablecoins mainstream, pushing forward this technology.”
As PayPal explores more decentralized exchanges (DEXs), it hopes to offer users the ability to make payments directly in PYUSD, without relying on traditional intermediaries.
Coinbase Expansion and Legal Challenges
Furthermore, the development of its business relationship with PayPal is just one of the many fronts on which Coinbase has been active. The exchange is continuing with the process to expand in different markets.
This includes opening a new office in Charlotte North Carolina and employing hundreds of people from that area. Such actions would show how Coinbase is expanding its operations in the United States and blending with the community.
Despite the expansions, the crypto exchange is still navigating regulatory hurdles, including a lawsuit concerning its staking services and a lawsuit by Oregon AG Rayfield. However, adding to the list, Alabama has dropped its enforcement action against the company related to its staking program.
BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes has recently conveyed a highly bold prediction for Bitcoin price, predicting it to hit $1 million in a few years. Speaking at the TOKEN2049 event in Dubai, Hayes outlined a potential timeline for such a bullish feat to occur, sending shockwaves across the crypto sector. Notably, BTC price is currently trading at the $95K level, showcasing bullish strength after a market turmoil witnessed at the beginning of this year.
BitMEX’s Arthur Hayes Predicts Bitcoin Price To Hit $1M; Here’s When
BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes has predicted that Bitcoin price will hit $1 million by 2028 during his speech at TOKEN2049. Primarily, he believes that if the U.S. increases dollar liquidity through measures that are similar to quantitative easing, cryptocurrency prices could leverage a significant surge.
For context, increased dollar liquidity could mean more money flowing into risk assets such as BTC. In response, the market could see the flagship coin gain substantially, with Hayes believing that $1 million is in BTC’s grasp.
Besides, the current broader market uncertainty remains primarily attributable to Trump’s push for high tariff policies, although the tariffs have been delayed for 90 days, per Arthur Hayes. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell may be reluctant to intervene directly, he stressed looking at the current market landscape. This could pave the way for short-term price volatility.
BTC price is currently trading at the $94K level, consolidating over the week after a market turmoil caused due to Trump’s tariff flip-flopping. Yet, the flagship crypto remains much-eyed by traders and investors globally amid such bold predictions.
Bullish Factors In Play
Coinglass data further indicated that BTC futures OI remained above the $60 billion mark, an optimistic dynamic underscoring heightened market interest. This stat has added to sentiments of a bull run looming for the flagship coin right ahead.
In addition, a Bitcoin price prediction by CoinGape also revealed that bulls remain dominant over the token at the moment, as per the 3-month bias indicator. However, this prediction has highlighted that the max target for 2028 remains $148K, a level substantially below Arthur Hayes’ forecast.
In conclusion, broader market sentiments revolving around the coin’s long-term prospects remain bullish amid strong dynamics, although the exact target for 3 years down the line remains speculative.
Subsequently, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the next BTC halving will take place in 2028, another bullish aspect when considering future movements.
Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation, is looking beyond meme coins to establish Solana as the infrastructure for what she calls “internet capital markets.”
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto and a presentation at the 2025 Web3 Festival in Hong Kong, Liu outlined her vision for blockchain technology’s role in democratizing financial access.
From Meme Coins to the “Everything Chain”
“Solana has evolved from being the DeFi chain to the NFT chain, the gaming chain, the payment chain, and recently the meme coin chain,” Liu explained. “When you sum all that up, Solana is the everything chain.”
While meme coins drove Solana’s price to an impressive $290 high in January before falling 60% to around $120 today, Liu views them as just one transient asset class in a much broader ecosystem. “Meme coins are just one type of asset. There will be something else—there’s always going to be the tulip market and the beanie baby market. That’s been going on for a really long time. That’s just what humans do with or without blockchain,” Liu noted.
Despite price volatility, Solana’s Total Value Locked (TVL) reached an all-time high in April 2025, demonstrating continued investor confidence in the ecosystem beyond speculative assets.
The Crisis of Capital Access for Young Generations
Liu, who previously co-founded Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase in 2018) and served as CFO of Chinaco Healthcare Corporation, brings significant experience from building businesses in both the US and China to her current role at Solana. Her background in traditional finance gives weight to her critique of current capital markets.
“Fifty years ago, it took 25 hours of labor to buy one share of the S&P 500. Today, it takes 195 hours,” Liu noted in her presentation, highlighting how capital gains have become less accessible to average workers while losses are increasingly socialized through national debt.
This inaccessibility to capital markets has created anxiety among young people globally. Liu pointed to challenges in Korea and China, where housing prices have skyrocketed beyond what young professionals can afford without parental support.
“In Korea and China, the parents’ generation has retained the upside of a major asset class like housing. Young people’s ability to convert hours of labor into capital and freedom later in life has become extremely limited,” she observed. “In China, it creates huge anxiety for families where young men are culturally expected to own an apartment before marriage, yet average professional salaries make this impossible without parental help.”
Blockchain as Global Financial Infrastructure
Liu sees blockchain’s core purpose as creating a unified global financial infrastructure, similar to how the internet unified attention. “What crypto is doing is providing this unified infrastructure to unify the wealth, the transactions, the financial coffers of five and a half billion people,” she explained.
This infrastructure enables what Liu calls “internet capital markets,” making the full range of financial assets available to anyone with an internet connection. She contrasts the simplicity of downloading a crypto wallet against the complex paperwork of traditional banking and investment systems.
Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation. Source: 2025 Web3 Festival Hong Kong.
For Liu, this infrastructure is particularly valuable in expanding access to equities and other assets that have both fundamental value and price discovery—currently reserved primarily for accredited investors even in developed markets.
Community-Based Capitalism and the Ownership Economy
Liu argues that blockchain offers an alternative to traditional economic systems. “In the last 100 years, we’ve come to accept that the dominant ownership models are either capitalist or communist—corporate ownership or state ownership,” she explained. “What Bitcoin proposed is that those aren’t the only choices.”
This has evolved into what Liu calls “community-based capitalism,” a term she uses to describe economic models where value accrues to network participants rather than just shareholders or the state. “Instead of universal basic income, which is essentially a welfare economy, crypto proposes universal basic opportunity,” she said. This model allows early participants in network building to share in the upside.
Liu contrasts this with traditional platforms like Uber, where early drivers who helped bootstrap the network received hourly pay but no equity upside. Her “ownership economy” concept refers to this more inclusive approach to capital formation where contribution and ownership are more closely aligned.
Solana’s governance reflects this philosophy, which was recently demonstrated in a controversial proposal to reduce inflation. Liu actively participated in this discussion, explaining that inflation reduction might seem efficient from a network security perspective but would potentially harm Solana as a yield-generating asset.
“Dynamic yield on an asset makes it a worse asset,” Liu emphasized. “If you have an asset yielding a fixed percentage annually, you price that very differently than an asset yielding at variable rates.”
Looking five years ahead, Liu envisions Solana enabling an ownership economy where blockchain creates new pathways for individuals to convert labor into capital, bringing “more inclusivity for five and a half billion people on the internet into capital markets.”
“The end state is moving into assets that have value, can also command price, and bring more inclusivity around the world,” Liu concluded. “This is where crypto is going.”
