NEAR just put up a 60% week and triggered $9.85M in short squeezes

@NEARProtocol posted one of the more notable price moves in the altcoin market this week, climbing roughly 60% in seven days and forcing nearly $10 million worth of bearish bets offside.

A Clean Technical Breakout

NEAR Protocol broke out of a falling wedge pattern, posting 60% weekly gains and moving from $1.50 to $2.40. According to liquidation data from Coinglass, the move triggered $9.85M in short liquidations as traders caught on the wrong side of the trade were forced to cover.

Falling wedges resolve upward roughly 70% of the time, and this one measured toward the $3.50 resistance zone that traders are now watching. Nearer-term, key resistance sits at $2.80 to $3.00, where the 200-day EMA sits, with $3.50 from November highs representing a larger test beyond that.

Open interest has also climbed to fresh highs of over $473 million, suggesting new capital is entering as traders aggressively position for further upside. However, analysts have flagged a divergence worth watching: on-chain activity tells a different story, with daily active users on the network falling from nearly 3 million earlier this year to roughly 266,000 currently, according to Token Terminal data.

NEAR Intents Adds a Structural Bid

Beyond the chart setup, there is a programmatic demand driver that has been quietly accumulating $NEAR since February. The protocol's NEAR Intents cross-chain settlement system has been auto-buying NEAR as a function of its fee flows.

NEAR Intents is designed to let AI agents, dApps, and protocols transact across chains without friction, with solvers competing to fill orders at the best price across swaps, bridges, and autonomous agent settlements. The protocol has processed over $10 billion in all-time volume across more than 15.7 million swaps. Settlement fees collected through this activity have been routed back into programmatic $NEAR purchases, creating a continuous demand floor that has been in place since February.

The latest rally appears to be driven in part by market positioning, AI speculation, and derivative activity, but the combination of a clean technical setup and a structural fee-driven bid has given traders a reason to take the move seriously. Whether network usage catches up to the price action will likely determine how much further $NEAR can run from here.

Sources
CoinPedia: Is NEAR Protocol's 60% Rally Just Getting Started?
MEXC News: NEAR Protocol Price Breaks Multi-Year Bearish Trend
NEAR Intents Official Docs: Fees