The US Department of Commerce has begun posting macroeconomic data on public blockchains – the administration’s latest move to embrace the use of innovative technology.
Best-known for powering cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and increasingly used in fields such as supply-chain management, blockchain is a distributed-ledger technology (DLT) that securely records transactions in ‘blocks’ linked together using cryptographic hashes to form a tamper-proof ‘chain’. It allows multiple participants to verify, store and share data without need for a central authority.
The Department of Commerce has announced that it will begin posting real gross domestic product (GDP) data on blockchain, starting with July 2025 data.
‘This is the first time a federal agency has published economic statistical data like this on the blockchain, and the latest way the department is utilising innovative technology to protect federal data and promote public use,’ a Department of Commerce announcement stated.
‘Through this landmark effort, the department hopes to demonstrate the wide utility of blockchain technology. It also aims to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for all of government, and to build on the Trump Administration’s historic efforts to make the United States of America the blockchain capital of the world,’ the announcement added.
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The accuracy and integrity of US economic data has become an increasingly high-profile topic since Trump returned to the White House in January. In August, he fired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer after he said on his social media platform Truth Social: “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad… But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!”.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said it is only fitting that Trump, who he called “the crypto-president” was leading the release of economic statistical data on the blockchain. “We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world.”
The department published what it describes as an ‘official hash’ of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)’s quarterly GDP data release for 2025’s second quarter – and, in some cases, the topline GDP figure for 2025’s second quarter – to nine blockchains in total. Data was also further disseminated through coordination with two ‘oracles’ (oracles are entities that connect blockchains to external systems) while three exchanges ‘helped facilitate the department’s publishing’, the announcement detailed.
The nine blockchains are: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Polygon PoS and Optimism. The oracles are Pyth (Pyth Network) and Chainlink. The exchanges – used by the department to buy cryptocurrency needed to pay for posting transactions on the blockchains, according to a report by news agency Bloomberg – are Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken.
‘The 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,’ according to the announcement.
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The Department of Commerce provided technical details in its press announcement of the data release (available as a pdf).
This hash was published to the nine blockchains ‘either as a memo or as data embedded in a smart contract, along with the topline figure, as each chain permitted,’ the department explains (it provides the transaction hash or smart contract address for each blockchain). It also highlights that data from the BEA – a bureau within the Department of Commerce – can be found through the BEA’s Application Programming Interface (API).
