Laser Digital, Nomura’s digital assets subsidiary, announces the launch of the Laser Digital NEAR Adoption Fund (the ‘Fund’). The Fund’s strategy seeks to provide a long-term exposure to the NEAR token enhanced with staking which allows institutional investors residing in eligible jurisdictions (“Investors”) to participate in the blockchain consensus mechanism and take advantage of the economic opportunities of the NEAR blockchain. Consequently, the Fund aims to harvest gains from a long-term trend combined with carry component in the Digital Assets asset class. The Fund utilises TruFin’s institutional-grade liquid staking solution, TruStake, to provide Investors with seamless exposure to the NEAR token, as well as the network’s underlying staking rewards.

Why NEAR?
The entire internet will experience a paradigm shift towards AI-first interfaces and businesses, and we believe that NEAR has positioned itself to be at the forefront of this AI-first future as the blockchain for AI. This is enabled by NEAR’s core technologies bridging AI and web3 – bringing agents, users, and services together in one single protocol:
• User-Owned AI: Building towards AI that users can trust with their data & assets and ultimately AI that makes choices to benefit individual users rather than some centralized profit-maximizing entity
• Chain Abstraction: A technology that connects all assets, across all chains, between AI agents and users while empowering AI agents to transact, and thereby solves for the interoperability problem
• Intents: A new type of transaction that allows information, assets, goods and services exchange between AI agents, users, and real world services, making it possible to unify liquidity across crypto ecosystems and also bring AI participants together with financial services, commerce, and end users
Sharded Blockchain: NEAR Protocol as a sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain with fast transaction throughput and already tens of millions of active users, offering scalable infrastructure for AI agents and users to transact effectively at any scale

These features make NEAR a valuable Layer-1 digital asset for the next wave of AI-driven Web3.0 applications. From this perspective NEAR aims to benefit from two long-term major trends: blockchain and AI, and the Fund aims to provide Investors exposure to both.

The Fund will be available in traditional format, after registration, in selected jurisdictions (with the exclusion of the US) to eligible institutional and professional investors. The Fund will also be available through various wealth management platforms.

The Fund is a segregated portfolio part of Laser Digital Funds SPC, a Segregated Portfolio Company registered as a mutual fund pursuant to section 4(3) of the Mutual Funds Act with CIMA (Cayman Islands Regulatory Authority).

Laser Digital is led by CEO Jez Mohideen who has over 25 years of experience in systematic investment strategies and macro trading at both Brevan Howard and Nomura. On launching the fund, Mohideen commented: “The Fund gives Investors a seamless way to gain exposure to digital assets through a long orientated exposure to the NEAR protocol that combines two major investment themes of digital assets and AI, alongside a carry overlay via the staking.”

Laser Digital was launched by Nomura and was co-founded by Steven Ashley, who previously led Nomura’s wholesale division and Jez Mohideen, who was Nomura’s Chief Digital Officer and Co-Head of Global Markets EMEA. Headquartered in Switzerland, with offices in Abu Dhabi Global Market, Dubai, Japan and UK – Laser Digital specializes in asset management, trading, solutions and venture in digital assets.

David Norris, CFO at NEAR Foundation: “We are excited to launch the Laser Digital NEAR Adoption Fund to give institutional investors exposure to NEAR‘s rapidly growing AI ecosystem, enhanced with staking returns. We are convinced that Laser Digital with its strong expertise and distribution capabilities is the right partner to provide investors with seamless and compliant access to NEAR.”

Source: Laser Digital