Commerce Secretary: GDP Data to Be Published on Blockchain
The U.S. Department of Commerce will begin publishing GDP figures on a blockchain, a move announced by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during a White House cabinet meeting.
“make core economic statistics more transparent, tamper-proof, and easily accessible to the public”
The initiative aims to make core economic statistics more transparent, tamper-proof, and easily accessible to the public, while improving the security of how those figures are stored, distributed, and verified.
Officials say the blockchain-based system will create an auditable, immutable record for GDP releases, reducing opportunities for data manipulation and improving trust in the accuracy of government statistics.
The effort is being positioned as part of a broader exploration of blockchain across federal agencies, with the Commerce Department focusing first on making GDP data reliably available for economists, researchers, market participants, and public stakeholders.
The United States joins other governments that have already integrated distributed ledger technology into public services. Estonia, an early adopter, used blockchain to secure more than one million patient records in 2016, and the European Union has launched various initiatives to incorporate blockchain into public administration. U.S. officials say these precedents inform the Commerce Department’s approach to secure storage, distribution, and verification of economic data.
Moving GDP reporting onto a blockchain promises benefits — immutability, traceability, and easier verification — but also raises practical challenges, including:
- Technical integration with existing data systems
- Privacy and confidentiality safeguards
- Interoperability standards across systems and agencies
- Governance and regulatory oversight for on-chain publication of official statistics
How quickly the department scales this rollout and addresses those issues will shape its impact on data users and the broader crypto and DeFi communities that increasingly rely on reliable on-chain and off-chain economic indicators.
