100 sats \ 9 replies \ @rijndael 24 Sep 2022 \ on: Is Voltage a regulatory time bomb? bitcoin
Lol. No, AWS isn’t a custodian.
They are. They hold the keys to any coins stored on nodes on their servers. Your keys, your coins. Amazon's keys, Amazon's coins.
reply
No, they don’t hold the keys in there raw form, they are encrypted client side and there’s no way for them to de-encrypt and spend/move your funds , that’s why they are considered non-custodian
reply
I think you are wrong. If the node (ie lnd) runs on AWS, then the keys are there, in the memory and their SREs can likely access it.
Can someone prove me wrong?
reply
theoretically, yes. practically, no. there are many layers of technical and policy controls in place to keep random SREs from touching customer instances.
reply
If the controls are "we don't want to" instead of "we can't do it" then it's custodial. What if I set up a bank and established a policy of "we don't let our employees touch customer funds" -- would that exempt me from needing a banking license? No. Amazon shouldn't get special treatment and neither should voltage. If they have access to unencrypted user keys in device memory then they are custodians of money.
(Btw I don't think licenses to transmit money or to do banking should exist in the first place. But custody exists and people who have it should be clear about it.)
reply
Same for Wallet of Satoshi.
reply
Well technically, yes. But if you look at it that way, then amazon owns a lot private info belonging to other huge corporations that use their services. Amazon tells you that the data is "secure" and they respect their customer's data, but how far does their "concern" for your data goes, i don't know either. Someone more knowledgeable with the legal technicalities of cloud providers and their obligations to the state should be able to tell you more. But, obviously, if the state is involved - you are stupid to think that CIA doesn't already have the info and capabilities to read any byte stored across any disk that AWS controls. If you want to fight the USD hegemony, you can't use their own infrastructure on their own land (includes land they bought in other countries) to defeat them - that's being stupid, and the opposite of sovereign. Uncle Sam will come for you if he wants to.
reply
This is my understanding as well. If it's in memory on someone else's machine, it's theirs.
reply
If AWS is not a custodian, why does Voltage have to make up all the security theater about not having access to users' keys and so on? They could just say: "we are a company that rents computers for hosting Lightning nodes, like AWS, but specialized in this specific niche".
reply