Grayscale Files Amended NEAR ETF as SpaceX IPO Fuels AI Token Trade

Grayscale Investments filed an amended S-1 registration statement for its proposed spot NEAR ETF on June 12, 2026, the same week Elon Musk-led SpaceX priced its record $75 billion IPO at a $1.77 trillion valuation. The amendment, filed under SEC Registration No. 333-292834, swaps Coinbase Custody for BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. as primary custodian and rewrites the staking language.

The new document arrives the same trading day SpaceX began trading on Nasdaq, and the AI-token narrative it touches. On-chain data inside the filing shows 1.3 billion NEAR in circulation, a $1.5 billion market capitalization, and a token ranking that has slipped from 39th to 43rd since the original January submission. Grayscale is positioning the product as a regulated, US-listed way for investors to access the NEAR token, which the firm describes as a blockchain built for AI-agent and inference workloads.

Grayscale Replaces Coinbase Custody With BitGo in Its Amended NEAR ETF Filing

The amendment names BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. as the primary custodian of the Grayscale Near Trust (NEAR), replacing Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC, which had been the sole custodian in the original January 20, 2026 S-1. Coinbase Custody now sits as an additional custodian.

The shift is the most visible operational change in the document, and it follows a pattern Grayscale has used in recent filings for spot products tracking BNB and Hyperliquid, where the firm has widened the roster of banks willing to hold altcoin assets. The amendment also adds Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP attorney Dylan H. Lojac to the legal team alongside partners Joseph A. Hall and Daniel P. Gibbons, mirroring prior Davis Polk engagements on Grayscale’s Sui, Solana, and Avalanche staking ETF launches. The new document carries SEC Registration No. 333-292834, a number that was missing from the original submission, and the full the amended NEAR ETF S-1 filed June 12 is now on the SEC’s public docket. Once the registration statement is effective, Grayscale Investments Sponsors, LLC intends to rename the trust “Grayscale Near Trust ETF” and list the shares on NYSE Arca under the ticker “GSNR,” with chief financial officer Edward McGee named as agent for service on the filing.

• Primary custodian: BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. (replacing Coinbase Custody)
• Additional custodian: Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC
• Prime broker: Coinbase, Inc.
• Transfer agent and administrator: The Bank of New York Mellon
• Trustee: CSC Delaware Trust Company

The Staking Wording, Rewritten for the SEC

The amended S-1 draws a sharper line on staking than the original filing did. It states that “at this time, none of the Trust, the Sponsor, the Custodian, nor any other person associated with the Trust may, directly or indirectly, engage in Staking of the Trust’s NEAR on behalf of the Trust.” That language codifies a current non-staking posture, with no carve-out until US law permits it.

The structure mirrors a pattern now common across Grayscale’s newer altcoin ETF filings, where the sponsor commits to hold and report NEAR passively until the rules allow yield-generating activity. The document reserves the option to add staking “to the extent that the Staking Condition is satisfied and Staking is implemented.”

The trust’s investment objective, the filing says, is for the value of the shares to reflect the value of the NEAR held by the trust, including any NEAR earned as staking consideration once regulators sign off. The trust itself is not a registered investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and is not a commodity pool under the CEA, a structural choice that is now standard across the altcoin-ETF product family. Grayscale, the sponsor, has no plans to launch a staking yield until the regulatory question is settled.

What the Filing Says About the NEAR Token Itself

The amendment refreshes the on-chain statistics the SEC will weigh as it reviews the application, with figures as of March 31, 2026 set out in the snapshot below. The disclosure lays out the token’s standing, the trust’s own NEAR position, and the price reference the filing uses to value the holdings.

• Circulating supply: 1.3 billion NEAR
• Market capitalization: approximately $1.5 billion
• 24-hour trading volume: approximately $77.3 million
• Market rank (CoinMarketCap): 43rd (down from 39th)
• Trust holdings: 607,594.45752581 NEAR
• Fair value per NEAR: $1.19

The trust’s NAV at the time of the original January filing was $2.19 per share on assets of about $900,000, per the original January 20 NEAR Trust S-1, a base that would expand if the ETF conversion is approved. The amended filing reports a trust position of 607,594.45752581 NEAR tokens at a fair value of $1.19 per token, the smallest precise figure in the document and the basis for the trust’s reported book value. The Grayscale Near Trust was formed on November 3, 2021, and commenced operations on May 22, 2024, with shares now trading on OTCQB under “GSNR,” the same symbol the sponsor intends to carry to NYSE Arca on conversion. The amendment keeps the structure of a Delaware statutory trust, with CSC Delaware Trust Company as trustee and BNY Mellon as transfer agent and administrator.

The filing’s index is the CoinDesk Near Benchmark Rate, calculated at 4:00 p.m. New York time on each business day. The trust issues shares in blocks of 10,000, called Baskets, to Authorized Participants, and is permitted to handle both in-kind and cash creations and redemptions. The shares are not registered under the Investment Company Act, and the sponsor believes the trust is not a commodity pool under the CEA.

Neither the SEC nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved the securities. The disclosure does not address the slide in price and ranking between the original and amended filings, leaving the reader to compare the snapshot above with the trust’s January baseline. The trust continues to operate without leverage or derivatives, a structural choice the sponsor has carried across its altcoin-ETF product family. The original S-1, filed January 20, 2026, has not produced a public decision, and the amendment is captioned Amendment No. 1 to Form S-1, dated June 12, 2026.

SpaceX’s $1.77 Trillion Debut Resets the AI Token Trade

The amended filing arrived in the same trading week as SpaceX’s long-anticipated IPO. The rocket and AI company priced 555.56 million shares at $135 per share on the evening of June 11, raising $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, and began trading on Nasdaq the next morning, with the full IPO terms detailed in SpaceX’s record $75B raise and retail access terms. Hyperliquid’s SpaceX futures were quoted at $167 shortly before the listing, a roughly 25% premium to the IPO price, while Polymarket gave 47% odds that the stock would close day one at a market cap of $2.2 trillion or higher.

“The AI lab is what’s really spiking the valuation and I think it’s a risky bet to put onto shareholders.”

Laurence Pevsner, a partner at venture capital firm Lux Capital, said that to the BBC in comments on SpaceX’s pre-IPO filings. The same BBC report, in SpaceX’s pre-IPO $1.75tn self-valuation filing, notes that SpaceX acquired xAI earlier this year and that Musk has long argued that space infrastructure is the cheapest way to power AI compute. Last year SpaceX brought in $18.6bn in revenue with a $4.9bn net loss, and in Q1 2026 it posted $4.7bn in sales with a $4.3bn loss, against $102bn in assets and $60.5bn of debt. The connection crypto traders draw is the AI buildout thesis: SpaceX’s S-1 lays out a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, of which roughly $26.5 trillion sits on the enterprise-AI side. The remaining $2 trillion is attributed to launch services, Starlink, and satellite internet.

NEAR Protocol, which bills itself as a blockchain for AI agents and confidential inference, has tried to position itself inside that same narrative, and Grayscale’s amended filing is the second formal step in the race to put a US NEAR ETF on the tape. Bitwise filed a competing NEAR ETF S-1 in May 2025, and no US spot NEAR ETF has been approved. The new filing is an attempt to position NEAR as a token the AI narrative can carry through SEC review on a name that has already slipped four places in market rank. Reuters reported on June 10 that a blockbuster SpaceX IPO may spell more bad news for crypto, a view that ties into the broader capital-reallocation risk the market has flagged.

Why a Coinbase-IPO Pattern Is Back on Some Analysts’ Radars

History offers a colder read on what a blockbuster listing can do to risk assets in adjacent markets. On April 14, 2021, Coinbase went public via a direct listing, opening at $381, spiking to $429, and closing the day at $328. The same session marked an all-time high for bitcoin near $65,000, after which BTC fell about 76% to a $15,500 bottom.

The pattern is not a prediction, but it is the comparison the Coinbase-IPO market-top pattern in past crypto cycles uses to frame the SpaceX trade. New Street Research, per CNBC, projects SpaceX shares at $165 within twelve months, while the Hyperliquid futures premium has already cooled from $215 to $167 since mid-May. Forbes also notes that the largest risk in the SpaceX listing is an unsuccessful outcome that pops the broader industry bubble, with a signal that demand for AI-linked products has run dry reverberating through other stocks. The Grayscale amendment lands in that exact window of capital reallocation.

Where This Fits in Grayscale’s Broader Altcoin ETF Push

The NEAR amendment is the latest in a stack of altcoin ETF filings Grayscale has lodged with the SEC in 2026, on top of a roster of nine live crypto ETFs already trading. The firm has also formed Delaware statutory trusts for proposed spot BNB and Hyperliquid ETFs, and it is pursuing approvals for products tracking Hedera, Avalanche, and Bittensor.

BitGo, named as the NEAR trust’s primary custodian, has become a recurring counterparty in those filings; the firm also services Grayscale’s spot BNB product, where BNY Mellon is administrator and transfer agent. Coinbase Inc. remains the prime broker across the family. The NEAR amendment is a near-twin of the BNB amendment in operational structure, with one notable difference: the NEAR filing carves out a future staking right tied to US law, while the BNB filing removed an earlier BNB contribution arrangement. Earlier staking-enabled products such as Grayscale’s Sui Staking ETF launch on NYSE Arca show how the same prime-broker template gets stretched when staking is in play.

Bitwise filed a competing NEAR ETF S-1 in May 2025, and no US spot NEAR ETF has been approved. The amended NEAR registration now sits in the SEC’s pipeline alongside the trust’s original January 20 filing, with no public timeline for an approval or further delay. Grayscale’s broader pitch, per the firm’s prior launches, is that converting a single-asset trust into an ETF gives mainstream investors a yield-aware, regulated way to hold a token that has otherwise only traded over the counter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What changed in Grayscale’s amended NEAR ETF filing?

The June 12, 2026 amendment, filed under SEC Registration No. 333-292834, swaps Coinbase Custody Trust Company for BitGo Bank & Trust N.A. as primary custodian, retains Coinbase Custody as an additional custodian, rewrites the staking provisions, refreshes NEAR ecosystem data as of March 31, 2026, and adds Davis Polk & Wardwell attorney Dylan H. Lojac to the legal team.

Why did Grayscale swap Coinbase Custody for BitGo?

The amended S-1 does not state a reason for the custody change. The original January 20, 2026 filing had named Coinbase Custody Trust Company as the sole custodian of the Grayscale Near Trust, and Coinbase, Inc. remains the prime broker in the updated document.

Does the Grayscale NEAR ETF offer staking yield?

Not now. The amended S-1 explicitly states that the trust, sponsor, custodian, and additional custodian do not currently stake NEAR. The filing reserves the option to add staking only if US law permits it.

How does the SpaceX IPO connect to the NEAR ETF?

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share on June 11, 2026, raising $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, and began trading on Nasdaq on June 12. The NEAR amendment landed the same week, as renewed AI-token narratives put a fresh spotlight on blockchains positioning for AI-agent and inference workloads.

When could the Grayscale NEAR ETF launch?

The amended filing gives no approval timeline. The original S-1 was filed January 20, 2026, and the SEC’s review of the application is pending. Bitwise filed a competing NEAR ETF S-1 in May 2025, and no US spot NEAR ETF has been approved.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Crypto assets, including NEAR, and spot crypto ETFs are subject to substantial risk, including total loss of capital, regulatory uncertainty, and price volatility. Approval of a spot NEAR ETF is not guaranteed. Consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision, and verify all figures against the most recent filings, as on-chain data and market conditions change frequently.