U.S. Government Starts Pushing Economic Data Onto Blockchains as ‘Proof of Concept’

The U.S. government has begun using blockchains to disseminate key economic data, starting with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s release of gross-domestic product (GDP) numbers on Thursday, which was described as a “proof of concept” for doing more of this in the future.

“We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, in a statement that announced the new approach to spinning out government data.

In a deliberate effort not to pick blockchain favorites, the department put out Thursday’s data via Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One. Polygon PoS and Optimism, identifying the transaction hashes for each in its announcement. The agency said that it also sent the data through Chainlink and Pyth and noted that exchanges Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken helped out.

The July GDP data, compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was posted as a PDF file.

Lutnick’s department credited President Donald Trump’s fostering of crypto and blockchain technology with what it described as a “landmark effort.”

The U.S. government issues a number of economic reports on a routine basis that have tremendous weight with the financial markets, including the Department of Labor’s jobs report and the consumer price index.

According to its statement, the Commerce Department “will continue to innovate and broaden the scope of publishing future datasets like GDP to include the use of other blockchains, oracles, and exchanges.”