[johncolanduoni]

This is actually how GCP has always done service account authentication. A GCP service account key is an asymmetric keypair and Google stores the public key. AWS is somewhat similar, but they use an symmetric HMAC so they store the same secret key you use.

[danscan]

It's interesting to imagine taking the pubkey as identity concept to its full extents in situations like this, for example if you could create a cloud account, spin up resources, and authorize payment for them all programmatically without having to enter payment details on a form (because your keypair can authorize payment with the whatever payment method you use)