EU MiCA Review Weighs Certification for Non-Custodial Bitcoin Wallet Developers

The tension here is between ESMA's stated principle that open-source and self-custody activity should not be presumed to be intermediation, and a consultation that nonetheless raises certification as a possible gate for non-custodial wallet developers. That distinction matters because it separates the software author from the service provider, and the proposed new regulated service for access to decentralized protocols suggests the Commission is looking to capture the access layer rather than the code. Whether the certification idea survives contact with the open-source carve-out is the open question, and the long timeline to the Article 140 report leaves the current regime intact in the meantime.