The US Commerce Department is preparing to release key economic statistics, including gross domestic product (GDP) data, on the blockchain, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced Tuesday.
The US Commerce Department is preparing to release key economic statistics, including gross domestic product (GDP) data, on the blockchain, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced Tuesday.
The initiative marks a major shift in how US federal agencies distribute information, aligning with President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda.
“The Department of Commerce is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain, because you are the crypto president, and we are going to put our GDP on the blockchain so people can use it for data and distribution,” Lutnick said during a White House .
He added that while the effort will begin with GDP figures, it could eventually expand across other departments once technical details are finalized.
The move comes after Trump’s January 2025 executive order directing federal agencies to embrace digital asset innovation and build a more favorable regulatory environment.
It also revives an unfinished project from Elon Musk’s now-defunct D.O.G.E department, which had explored putting government spending on a blockchain for public transparency.
Yes, the US joins a growing list of governments and agencies that use blockchain for public administration. Several US agencies, including the Treasury, the Fiscal Service, and even the Department of Defense, have already been experimenting with blockchain-based recordkeeping, from tracking government spending to managing supply chains.
Globally, pioneered the field in 2016 when it integrated Guardtime’s KSI blockchain into its e-Health system to secure over a million patient records. The same infrastructure now supports its digital ID network.
In Europe, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), in 2018, allows member states such as France, Slovenia, and Denmark to host validator nodes.
Singapore and Australia also a blockchain system in 2021 to streamline trade documentation, while California digitized 42 million car titles on a permissioned Avalanche blockchain in 2024 to combat lien fraud.
No firm timeline has been given for when blockchain-published economic data will go live. For now, the move stands as one of the most ambitious attempts yet to merge digital asset technology with federal governance.
