Crypto
NEAR Hit Its Highest Price Since January 2025, Then Fell 23% the Same Day
NEAR Protocol touched $5.595 early on October 8 after tripling since early September, then dropped to $4.301 and closed down 16.3% on $304 million of volume — below the previous day's low.
NEAR Protocol has been one of the strongest large tokens of the autumn. From $1.89 on September 2, it climbed almost without pause to $5.39 by September 27, on daily volume that regularly topped $200 million. It spent the following ten days consolidating between about $4.55 and $5.55, despite a security incident at NEAR Intents at the start of October.
On Thursday, October 8, it tried to break out. NEAR rose through the Asian session and reached $5.595 in the 07:00 UTC hour, its highest price since January 20, 2025. The breakout lasted about an hour. NEAR fell 3.1% in the 08:00 UTC hour and kept slipping through the European morning, to around $5.00 by the US open. Then, in the 15:00 UTC hour, the same hour bitcoin and the chip stocks sold off, NEAR dropped 7.4% to $4.633 on $45.2 million of volume. It reached $4.301 in the 18:00 UTC hour, 23% below the morning high.
NEAR closed at $4.464, down 16.33%, on $303.8 million of volume, its lowest close since September 23. Because the day's high was above the previous day's high and its close was below the previous day's low of $4.868, Thursday was a bearish outside reversal — a pattern that often marks exhaustion after a long advance. Early on Friday, NEAR bounced to about $4.86.
We didn't find a specific announcement behind Thursday's drop, and the timing points as much to the broader selloff as to anything specific to NEAR. But a failed breakout at a multi-year high, on heavy volume, is a meaningful signal in its own right: it shows that sellers were waiting above $5.50.