Here’s why Near Protocol price is pumping

Near Protocol ($NEAR) price continued its spectacular surge on Black Friday even as Bitcoin and other altcoins took a breather. The token jumped to a high of $4.61, its highest point since September 2022. It has jumped by more than 360% from its lowest point this year.

Gate lists Neat as Binance lists USDC on Near

Near Protocol’s price has been on a strong rally in the past few months, helped by the ongoing altcoin rally. The coin’s rally accelerated a few weeks ago after the network introduced NEAT, the first inscription in the network.

NEAT was created to take advantage of the rising interest in inscriptions as evidenced by the strong performance of Bitcoin Ordinals and ORDI. It seeks to take advantage of Near Protocol’s scalable infrastructure, low transaction fees, and faster speeds.

According to the statement, a single $NEAR token can process up to 2,000 transactions at low gas prices. Gate.io became one of the biggest exchanges to list the NEAT token on Christmas Day.

The other reason why the NEAR price is rising is news that Binance had completed integrating USD Coin (USDC) on Near Protocol. It then opened deposits and withdrawals, giving it access to millions of customers.

Near Protocol price also jumped as its DeFi ecosystem bounced back. The total value locked (TVL) in the ecosystem rose by over 12% on Tuesday to over $106 million. According to DeFi Llama, the biggest dApps in its ecosystem are LINEAR Protocol, Meta Pool Near, and Burrow.

Finally, the coin is rising as traders pump in social media platforms. A closer look shows that the $NEAR hashtag was trending in key platforms like X (Twitter) and StockTwits. Recently, these social media platforms have become useful in pumping tokens like Solana and Avalanche.

Near Protocol price forecast

NEAR chart by TradingView

The daily chart shows that the $NEAR token has been in a strong uptrend in the past few months. In this period, it has spiked from a low of $0.97 to over $4.61. It recently crossed the important resistance point at $2.83, its highest point on February 8th. The coin also formed a golden cross pattern on November 26th.

Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Stochastic Oscillator have moved above the overbought level. Therefore, the outlook for the coin is mildly bullish, with the next point to watch being at $5.0. A brief pullback to $4 is also possible.

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