NEAR drops 7.6 percent as chip stocks drag the Nasdaq: can $4.83 hold?

NEAR Protocol is trading at $4.91 in the early hours of Friday, October 23, 2026. That is 7.57 percent below the level of 24 hours earlier, while Bitcoin lost 3.30 percent and Ether 3.31 percent over the same period. The trigger does not sit inside the NEAR blockchain but on the stock market: technology and chip stocks fell on Wall Street, oil held above $111 a barrel, and money moved out of risky assets. NEAR is marketed as a blockchain for AI applications, which ties it to precisely the trend that turned on Thursday.

NEAR price falls to $4.91 while Bitcoin holds $81,438

The 24-hour range runs from $4.83 to $5.33. At the lower end, NEAR sat roughly 9.4 percent below the daily high. Market capitalisation stands at $6.42 billion, which is rank 19 among all cryptocurrencies. Trading volume over 24 hours came to $695.8 million. The figures are CoinGecko price data from October 23, 2026, 2:56 a.m. CEST.

The comparison with the larger coins shows the pattern of the day. The smaller a coin is, and the more closely it hangs on the AI story, the wider its move to the downside.

What the longer-dated numbers say

Over one month NEAR is still up 11.07 percent despite the slide, and over one year up 126.36 percent. Both put the day in perspective: anyone who bought in October is still in profit. At the same time the price sits 76.0 percent below the all-time high of $20.44 reached on January 16, 2022. Around 1.31 billion NEAR are in circulation, and total supply stands at practically the same figure. No unlock date releasing additional coins into the market is behind this move.

The trigger comes from the stock market

On Thursday, October 22, 2026, Bitcoin opened at $84,024.44 according to Yahoo Finance, 1.3 percent above the previous day's opening price. By 7:15 a.m. New York time it had slipped to $81,809.90. Ether opened at $2,471.35, one percent higher, and then gave way as well. The outlet points to the oil price, which held above $111 a barrel after passing $112 in the morning.

The US stock market fell sharply at the same time. The Yahoo Finance market report from the same day describes a sell-off in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, driven by falling technology stocks and doubts about the AI trade; Meta shares dropped hard. A high oil price lifts inflation expectations, higher inflation expectations cut hopes of falling interest rates, and fading rate hopes hit assets without a running yield first. Cryptocurrencies belong in that group, and so do technology stocks without earnings.

What a risk-off day means

Risk-off describes a trading day on which investors pull money out of volatile positions across every asset class and shift into bonds, cash or gold. What matters is the simultaneity: no single coin falls on news of its own; the whole field gives way at once. That is exactly what happened on this day. Among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies, not one without a stablecoin peg closed higher.

Why an AI blockchain swings harder in a sell-off

NEAR Protocol is a layer-1 blockchain that spreads its computing load across several parallel sections through sharding. Since 2024 the project has pointed its public positioning at AI applications, from agents that trigger transactions to services that broker computing power. That positioning brings attention when the AI sector runs. It works just as strongly in the other direction.

How the double move builds

The mechanism behind it is no crypto special case but a question of market breadth and order book depth. On any given trading day, billions of dollars in buy and sell orders sit close together around Bitcoin. A wave of selling eats through those layers slowly. NEAR turned over $695.8 million in 24 hours, roughly one hundredth of Bitcoin's volume. The same amount of selling clears more price levels in a thinner order book, and the price falls further.

Then there is the order in which people sell. Anyone cutting risk sells what has risen most and what is backed least by a running yield. NEAR was up 126 percent over one year. That gain is the cushion profit-taking draws on during a risk-off day. The result on October 23: 7.57 against 3.30 percent, a ratio of 2.3 to 1.

NEAR is down 7.0 percent since Wednesday

On October 21, 2026 the opposite story stood in this spot: NEAR rose 6.0 percent to $5.28, more than twice as strongly as Bitcoin. From that level down to today's $4.91 is a fall of 7.0 percent. The ratio to the broad market has stayed the same, only the sign has flipped. That is the point a glance at a single day hides: the sensitivity to the stock market works both ways, and it is not a one-off.

The comparison with October 13 supports this. NEAR fell 11.7 percent in a single day back then, dropping below five dollars before recovering part of the loss. On that day too the push came from outside. Holding NEAR therefore means holding what is in effect a leveraged position on sentiment in the technology sector, without having taken on any leverage.

Long liquidations amplify the move

A wave of forced closures hit the futures market on October 22 alongside the price move. Readings of the CoinGlass data diverge because they were taken at different times: PANews and TechFlow cite roughly $374 million to $376 million over 24 hours, ChainCatcher $429 million, Crypto Times $458 million and FXStreet around $474 million. The range therefore runs from $374 million to $474 million. The sources agree on the direction: Crypto Times puts the share of long positions at 91.2 percent.

A liquidation is not a voluntary decision to sell. Anyone holding a leveraged position puts up only part of the notional value as collateral. If the price falls far enough that this collateral no longer covers the losses, the exchange closes the position itself and sells into the falling market. Those sales push the price down further, bring the next group of positions to their limit and set off a chain of liquidations. In a coin with a thin order book, that chain runs through faster than in Bitcoin.

How to spot a wave like this

Two signals are publicly available and cost nothing. Open interest, the sum of all open futures contracts, drops sharply during a liquidation wave because positions disappear instead of changing hands. And the funding rate, the balancing payment between the long and the short side, turns negative as soon as the short side has the upper hand. The common futures exchanges and data sites show both figures directly on the market page, without any sign-up.

$4.83 and $5.33 are the levels from the past 24 hours

Two values come straight out of this day's trading data and need no model. The daily low sits at $4.83, roughly 1.6 percent below the current price. The daily high sits at $5.33, roughly 8.6 percent above it. Trading over the past 24 hours has played out between those two points.

The five-dollar mark serves as a third point of reference. It is not a technical line but a round number where many orders cluster; NEAR already slipped through it on October 13 and came back afterwards. The price currently sits 1.8 percent below it. Which of these levels holds is for the market to decide, not a forecast; what is documented is only where they lie.

Buying crypto in Germany runs through licensed providers under MiCA

Since the European MiCA regulation applies in full, trading platforms may only offer cryptocurrencies in the EU with authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. For you that changes three things above all: the provider has to show the licence, it has to give you an information sheet on costs and risks before you buy, and it has to keep client funds separate from its own assets. A licence is no guarantee against price losses. It regulates who may trade and which duties apply.

In practical terms: before buying, check whether the provider is authorised in the EU, how high the trading fee and the spread are, and whether NEAR can be traded there against euro at all or only against a stablecoin. The second route costs an extra conversion, because a spread is charged twice.

With leverage, the liquidation level decides the loss

A day down 7.6 percent is a paper loss on an unleveraged position, the kind you can sit through. With leverage it becomes a different calculation. At five times leverage, a price move of 20 percent wipes out the collateral entirely; at ten times, 10 percent is enough. This day's range from $4.83 to $5.33 spans 9.4 percent. A ten-times leveraged position opened at the daily high was therefore mathematically gone at the daily low.

From that comes a check you run before opening a position, not after: divide 100 by your leverage and you have the price move in percent that consumes your collateral in full. If that figure sits below the coin's usual daily range, the position is not built for an ordinary trading day. NEAR showed a 9.4 percent range on this day and an 11.7 percent daily loss on October 13.

The one-year holding period applies to NEAR gains too

In Germany, cryptocurrencies count as other assets for tax purposes. Sales within one year of purchase are a private disposal: the gain is taxed at your personal income tax rate once the sum of all such gains in a year reaches the €1,000 threshold. After a holding period of more than one year, the gain on a sale remains tax-free.

A falling price has a side to it that is easily overlooked. Losses from sales inside the one-year window can be offset against gains from other private disposals in the same year, and any excess can be carried forward. Anyone who sold at a profit earlier in a year and at a loss later sets the two against each other. That requires records documenting purchase date, purchase price, sale date and sale price per unit. Which units count as sold follows, per wallet, the method you apply consistently.

Staking locks up NEAR and shifts the tax position

NEAR can be delegated to validators and earns a yield that way. The emission rate still stands at 2.5 percent a year, after a vote to cut it to 1.6 percent failed. Two points matter more on a day like this than the yield itself. First, delegated amounts are subject to an unstaking period before the coins are freely available again; anyone wanting to sell into a slide cannot reach the position during that time. Second, staking rewards are taxable in Germany as other income in the year they are received, regardless of whether the underlying coin is in profit or at a loss.

That produces a situation which occasionally catches holders out in a down year: tax falls due on the rewards received, while the price of the reward may have dropped since the day it arrived. Valuation follows the price on the day of receipt. Anyone delegating therefore records that price as they go. Which providers set which periods and fees is set out in the comparison of staking platforms.

With custody, who holds the keys is what counts

If the coins sit on a trading platform, the platform holds the private keys. That is convenient for trading and shifts the counterparty risk onto the provider. In a wallet of your own you hold the keys yourself, but you carry full responsibility for backing up the recovery words. For NEAR there is one additional detail that has become practical in recent weeks: the MyNearWallet wallet is shutting down on October 31, 2026, and holdings there have to be moved before that date. A sell-off day is a poor moment to read a deadline like that for the first time.

Regardless of the price, every cryptocurrency carries the risk of total loss. This asset class swings hard, individual projects can lose their value entirely, and there is no deposit guarantee as there is on a bank account.

NEAR at $4.91: $4.83 is this week's level

The day was a market event, not news out of the NEAR blockchain. Anyone holding the position therefore has less to decide about the project than about the size of their own risk. Three steps follow directly:

1. Measure leverage against the daily range. 100 divided by the leverage gives the move that consumes the collateral. If the result sits below this day's 9.4 percent, the position is too large. The differences in funding rate and liquidation logic are set out in the perp DEX comparison.
2. Check the buying route and the fees before any top-up. What counts is the EU licence, the spread, and whether NEAR trades against euro or only against a stablecoin. The terms are set out in the crypto exchange comparison.
3. Record purchase and sale data for the one-year window. Without a date and a price per unit, neither the one-year holding period can be shown nor a loss offset. Suitable programs are listed in the crypto tax software comparison.

(As of October 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)