Bitcoin Wave lets your AI agent set up a complete Bitcoin banking stack on hardware you own. One license key, one instruction to your agent, and you're self-sovereign. Here's what that actually means.
Most people who own Bitcoin don't actually hold it. They trust an exchange — Coinbase, Binance, whoever — to hold it for them. This means:
Running your own node fixes all of this. But setting one up has historically required deep technical knowledge — command lines, config files, networking, cryptography. Most people give up.
Bitcoin Wave bridges the gap. You tell your AI agent one sentence, and it handles the entire setup. The agent uses the btcwave CLI — a deterministic installer that knows exactly what to do on your hardware.
Bitcoin Knots is a well-established Bitcoin node implementation. It validates every transaction and every block since 2009. It's the same software that thousands of node operators run worldwide — Bitcoin Wave doesn't fork it or modify it. Your agent downloads the official release, verifies the cryptographic checksums, and installs it with a configuration optimised for your hardware.
Key configuration choices:
Lightning is Bitcoin's payment layer — it enables instant, near-free transactions. Your agent installs LND (Lightning Network Daemon), connects it to your node, and can help you open channels and manage liquidity.
Fulcrum indexes the blockchain so you can connect any Bitcoin wallet (Sparrow, Electrum, BlueWallet, etc.) to your own node. This means your wallet queries go to your hardware, not to a third-party server.
If you run a business, BTCPay lets you accept Bitcoin payments directly — no payment processor, no fees beyond the Bitcoin network fee. Invoices, payment tracking, and accounting integration.
A real-time web interface showing your node's status: blockchain height, sync progress, connected peers, mempool activity, hashrate, and more. Accessible from any browser on your network.
The MCP (Model Context Protocol) server is how your AI agent communicates with your node after setup. It provides structured tools for checking status, estimating fees, querying transactions, and running diagnostics — all through natural conversation with your agent.
Bitcoin Wave is designed so you don't have to trust us:
Every repository is public on GitHub. You can read every line of code, every config file, every install script. If you want to build it yourself instead of buying a key, you can.
We don't distribute our own Bitcoin software. Your agent downloads Bitcoin Knots from the official source and verifies the checksums match. You're running the same binary that the Bitcoin community audits and reviews.
Your license key is validated once at install time. After that, your node never contacts btcwave.app again. There's no telemetry, no analytics, no usage tracking. Your node is yours.
Your wallet's master key (the 24-word seed phrase) is generated on your hardware and displayed on your screen. Your AI agent is explicitly told to look away during this step. The seed never passes through any network, any API, or any third-party system. Paper and pen only.
After setup, you decide how much your agent can do:
| Level | Name | What your agent can do |
|---|---|---|
| L0 | Read | Check status, read blockchain data. Cannot move funds. |
| L1 | Receive | Generate invoices and receive payments. Cannot send. |
| L2 | Propose | Draft transactions for your approval. You confirm each one. |
| L3 | Autonomous | Send within daily limits you set. Full management within caps. |
You start at L0 (read-only) and can escalate when you're comfortable. The limits are enforced by the vault — your agent physically cannot exceed them, regardless of what it's asked to do.
The software is open source and free. The $49 license key pays for the orchestrated experience — the curated configuration, the deterministic installer, the agent skill, the dashboard, and the MCP integration that makes it all work as one coherent system. It's the difference between having all the ingredients and having the recipe.