The United States now publishes its gross domestic product (GDP) on nine blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. To do this, five crypto companies are collaborating with the government, including Coinbase and Chainlink. Let’s take a look at all the players involved.
The United States publishes its GDP on nine different blockchains
On Wednesday, we reported on the unprecedented announcement by the U.S. Department of Commerce, through its secretary Howard Lutnick. We learned that there were plans to publish the country’s economic data on the blockchain, starting with gross domestic product (GDP).
As promised, not one but nine blockchains have been chosen, namely:
- Bitcoin;
- Ethereum;
- Solana;
- Tron;
- Stellar;
- Avalanche C-Chain;
- Arbitrum One;
- Polygon POS;
- OP Mainnet (Optimism).
Specifically, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) published a statement on US GDP in the second quarter in a 19-page PDF. The Department of Commerce then applied the SHA-256 hashing function to publish the output hash on various networks.
In the example below, we find the hash “c70972a12908b73c2407d9cc6842ba2a02203a690f3090cd29f30c45f0cfd93d” (highlighted in yellow) in the appropriate transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain:
Here, the advantage of this maneuver is that if the US government wanted to falsify GDP data after publication, it could be easily identified, since the SHA-256 function would give a different result from the one reported above.
Howard Lutnick praised the merits of this innovation:
It is entirely appropriate for the Department of Commerce and President Donald Trump, the crypto president, to publish economic statistics on the blockchain. We are making the American economic truth immutable and accessible to the world as never before, thereby consolidating our role as the global capital of blockchain.
To carry out this project, several well-known players in the crypto ecosystem were selected to collaborate with the U.S. government. These include the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken, as well as the Chainlink oracles in Pyth.
Although LINK did not react particularly strongly, PYTH exploded by nearly 100% on Thursday and is now trading at $0.22, up 89% over 24 hours:
Of course, everyone involved has been quick to congratulate themselves on the achievement. For example, Jonathan Jacyhm, Kraken’s global head of policy and government relations, believes it anchors blockchain technology in the present:
Today’s announcement perfectly illustrates how governments and industry can work together to promote innovation in the global economy. The message is clear: blockchain technology is not just the future of financial infrastructure, it is becoming the present.
At the same time, it should also be noted that Chainlink has published six data sources related to the U.S. economy, which can now be used by developers for applications within decentralized finance. Among other things, these data sources include GDP and the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index.
