🧠 How Bitcoin Survived the AWS Blackout of October 20🧠 How Bitcoin Survived the AWS Blackout of October 20

On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a massive outage in its US-EAST-1 region, impacting over 100 services due to a DNS resolution failure.
Within minutes, financial apps, social media, and crypto platforms began reporting issues.

Al Jazeera – What caused Amazon's AWS outage and why did so many major apps go offline

✅ What Happened to Bitcoin?✅ What Happened to Bitcoin?

The Bitcoin protocol didn’t stop for a single second.
Blocks kept being produced, miners kept operating, and transactions continued to confirm.
However, many users —myself included— couldn’t access our Lightning Network (LN) funds because Wallet of Satoshis went offline after its AWS infrastructure went down.

It was a hands-on lesson in digital sovereignty:

“Your node may be fine, but if your access depends on a third party, your freedom is still conditional.”

⚠️ What Was Affected?⚠️ What Was Affected?

• Coinbase users faced login and transaction issues.
• Infura (used by MetaMask and several L2 networks) stopped responding.
• Layer 2 networks such as Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Linea became inaccessible for many users.
• Non-crypto services like Snapchat, Venmo, and Alexa also went down for hours.

The Guardian – AWS outage hits dozens of websites and apps

🔍 The Great Irony of “Decentralization”🔍 The Great Irony of “Decentralization”

While no blockchain actually failed, the access layer did.
Thousands of users were cut off —not because the protocols crashed, but because they all relied on the same centralized provider.

“When a major cloud provider sneezes, the Internet catches a cold.”
— Wired

The ideal of decentralization collided with reality:
much of the Web3 ecosystem still depends on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to operate.

💡 Lessons for Crypto Users💡 Lessons for Crypto Users

• If your wallet or dApp relies on external servers, your access can fail even if the network is alive.
• Running your own node or choosing truly decentralized infrastructure reduces that risk.
• Digital sovereignty isn’t just “holding your keys,” it’s also about not depending on someone else’s cloud.

Wired – The Long Tail of the AWS Outage

📌 My Personal Case📌 My Personal Case

During the outage, I couldn’t access my Lightning funds via Wallet of Satoshis.
It wasn’t Bitcoin that failed —it was the bridge to it.
That day I was reminded of something we often forget:

Decentralization isn’t something you preach; it’s something you practice.

Bitcoin kept humming quietly in the background, indifferent to the digital chaos.
But for many users, access to their sovereignty was temporarily paused.

In short:

• Bitcoin: stable and resilient.
• Centralized apps: collapsed in sequence.
• Lesson: decentralization doesn’t end at the blockchain; it must extend to the infrastructure.

Sources:
AWS | CryptoSlate | CoinDesk | The Guardian | Wired | Cointelegraph | Al Jazeera | ManFromHell | Lefteris Karapetsas | Matt Flint |

🐺 Villawolf:

Bitcoin didn’t fail. Centralized access did.