- Government of Bermuda partners with NEAR AI for secure artificial intelligence across the public service sector.
- Arthur Hayes backs NEAR to outperform most altcoins as AI-focused tokens power the agentic economy.
The Government of Bermuda has announced a partnership with NEAR Protocol. According to the announcement, the Bermuda Government will integrate NEAR AI and deploy it to improve government operations and the delivery of citizen-facing services.
NEAR AI will be utilized for administrative work, allowing the government to improve processing time, reduce administrative workload, and increase response time to citizens. The government notes that all data will be processed in a highly secure system to protect sensitive data. This will be aided by IronClaw, NEAR AI’s secure open-source system designed to safely run AI agents.
This means no one, not even NEAR AI, will have access to the data. The system will keep passwords and sensitive credentials in an encrypted storage, tools will operate in secure and isolated environments, and it will prevent sensitive information from being exposed.
Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR and CEO of NEAR AI, explained:
“When a public servant submits their personal data to an AI system, even the infrastructure provider should not be able to see that data. Confidentiality should be built into the very architecture of AI systems that handle sensitive information.”
Hon. David Burt, JP, MP, Premier of Bermuda, also applauded NEAR’s approach to privacy, saying the partnership represented responsible AI adoption.
“We chose NEAR AI because their infrastructure protects citizen data at the architectural level,” stated the PM.
The Bermuda government has taken key initiatives to become a leading country in digital assets adoption and regulation. As ETHNews reported, the Stellar Development Foundation and the Government of Bermuda are working on key payment and financial services on Stellar as it works toward a fully onchain national economy. Bermuda is also working with Chainlink to monitor digital assets in live environments in a new pilot.
NEAR Social Metrics Light Up
NEAR Protocol’s NEAR coin has seen renewed sentiment based on increased social mentions. According to LunarCrush, which tracks tokens’ social media activity, social comments in the community are up by 80%.
With price still down -51.42% over the last year, NEAR Protocol metrics appear to be turning positive.
Over the last week, $NEAR price has moved up +5.45%, sitting at the highest point in the last three months.
In addition to price, the community showing up strong. Social… pic.twitter.com/4hgMrKzLWT
— LunarCrush 🌕™ (@LunarCrush) May 14, 2026
At the same time, the coin’s price is up by nearly 5% in the last 7 days and is trading for $1.55 at the time of writing.
BitMEX cofounder Arthur Hayes has recently backed NEAR as one of his best bets in the crypto market. Hayes revealed that the world is in a global AI race, creating an ideal space for crypto. He singled out NEAR alongside Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Zcash (ZEC) as his biggest bet in the coming cycle, stating that “it’s time to shitcoin.”
He further noted that he will soon explain his thesis on why the privacy narrative, combined with Near intents, will create a positive cash flow situation for the protocol.
