Wavespace, a Bitcoin neobank serving the Eurozone, has announced MiCA compliance for its “self-deposit” debit card. The young fintech company is at the forefront of Bitcoin payment technology in Europe with support for the Lightning Network and auto DCA for self-service.
Debit cards in Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry have traditionally worked by pre-loading escrow accounts with bitcoin or stablecoins. The process of preloading was usually on-chain, took time to complete and required manual input from the user to send from self-managed wallets or cold storage. If the pre-loaded balance ran out on the card, spending would not be possible.
Wavespace’s self-custodial card solves these problems with a new Bitcoin technology called Nostr Wallet Connect, or NWC for short. This protocol, documented in NIP-47, allows users to connect a service like this payment card to a self-hosted Lightning node. The user sets a minimum balance, e.g. $200, and each time the user spends from the card via the VISA network, Wavespace deducts rate from the user’s self-storage wallet to top up the card. This process minimizes custody risk while maximizing the user’s exposure to the asset and automating the friction of using bitcoin.
NWC is a technology developed by the Nostr ecosystem, a high-tech niche within the Bitcoin industry that branches into social media and other communication protocols.
Wavespace Neobank
As a high-tech neobank, Wavespace provides users with a personal IBAN account to which they can send fiat to buy Bitcoin. Their automated DCA services can be set to withdraw bitcoin upon purchase to a selected Bitcoin address.
The company is MiCA compliant, making it one of the few surviving Bitcoin exchanges in Europe when the complicated crypto rules came online.
On the privacy front, the deep Lightning network integration of Wavespace lets the user access the banking system in a clear and compliant way without exposing all their payment data on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since Lightning payments are off-chain, there is no single public record that leaks user data; instead, transactions move through payment channels between different user services, leaving no obvious public trail. The result is a growing compromise between the high-privacy, cypherpunk values that created the Bitcoin and crypto industries, while freeing up access to the old financial system and compatible integration with regulatory-heavy areas like Europe.
In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Eivydas Račkauskas, Chief Orange Pill Giver at Wavespace, said that 70% of payments on the platform use the Lightning Network and that the company is exploring the ARK protocol for additional escrow-oriented payment integrations. He also revealed that the company is integrated with Lightspark and is ready for an expansion to the US, although he did not reveal further details on the matter.
According to Račkauskas, Wavespace has been almost entirely bootstrapped and self-funded, except for an early Relai angel investor who backed them in 2025. They are currently in the middle of another fundraising round.