New reports from the White House indicate that the Trump administration, specifically Howard Lutnick's Department of Commerce, has seemingly inexplicable designs to start putting statistics "on the blockchain." As to what data exactly might find its way to the blockchain, or what purpose that might serve, Lutnick failed to elaborate.
Gizmodo reports that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told President Trump on Aug. 26 that his department "is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain because you are the crypto president, and we are going to put out GDP on the blockchain so people can use the blockchain for data distribution."
Lutnick added, "and then we’re going to make that available to the entire government so all of you can do it ... we’re just ironing out all the details so we can do it.”
You'd be forgiven for not remembering what the blockchain is. It was the hype train of choice before being briefly supplanted by the metaverse, and now it's barely managed to hitch its caboose to AI. For everyone else, just say it with me: The blockchain is an immutable, distributed ledger used to keep an ostensibly tamper-proof log of... stuff.
The most famous example of the blockchain in action is cryptocurrency, which is supposed to keep its users honest in the absence of a central regulator. Companies have been looking to find ways to apply the blockchain to non-cryptocurrency projects—and raising large amounts of money in the process—for the better part of a decade.
There has been some progress over the years. Kraken said in January that "blockchain adoption is accelerating across major sectors like finance, healthcare, and supply chain management." So-called Web3 proponents have also made blockchain adoption (among other things) a core part of what they view as the next generation of the internet.
Yet it's still unclear how blockchain-based solutions are superior to their predecessors. Even if the ultimate goal for most of these projects is to avoid centralized authority, the Department of Commerce is by definition a central authority, so that wouldn't apply here. Lutnick didn't offer any details; he merely drew the line between crypto and the blockchain.
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