Stefan Rust, the CEO of Truflation, says his open letter to D.O.G.E. is intended to encourage its leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to rethink how the U.S. government measures and manages the economy’s health. Rust argues that the newly created agency has extraordinary capabilities for obtaining real-time and nuanced metrics about inflation and productivity.

The Truflation CEO told Bitcoin.com News that having such capability at its disposal means the newly created agency “can see near-instantaneous shifts in spending power, labor markets, and consumer patterns.” Possessing such information, in turn, enables U.S. policymakers to put forward “more responsive policy, where decisions aren’t only informed by the past but illuminated by the needs of the present.”

Rust also hopes his letter will encourage D.O.G.E. to adopt a data-driven, pro-tech approach aligned with its “forward-thinking principles.”

Regarding the U.S. economic prospects under Donald Trump, Rust warns that the national debt could undermine the Republican’s policies focused on deregulation and competitive corporate tax rates. To achieve its objectives, Rust predicts the Trump administration will need to pursue a more calculated balancing act.

In additional comments, Rust discussed indicators for investors to stay ahead of inflation and shared his thoughts on the impact of reduced interest rates on the crypto market. Below are Rust’s answers to all the questions sent.

Stefan Rust (SR): The US is at an inflection point where inflation, government spending, and interest rates will define the nation’s economic trajectory, not only during Trump’s presidency but probably for the next decade. US debt alone is crippling the country; I believe something like 46% of all debt increase in the history of the US was accrued during Janet Yellen’s time at the Fed and as Treasury Secretary.

Historically, Trump’s policies have focused on deregulation, competitive corporate tax rates, and stimulating investment through strategic spending programs. But with national debt at such elevated levels and global supply chains still recalibrating after unprecedented disruptions, the incoming government will need to walk a fine line.

If the administration pursues substantial federal spending without a corresponding surge in productivity, we could see inflationary pressures persist. That said, the Federal Reserve has shown increasing willingness to act independently and may elect to maintain tighter monetary policy – in other words, modestly elevated interest rates – to keep inflation in check, albeit at the risk of dampening business lending and slowing housing markets.

My expectation is that we’ll witness a more calculated balancing act. The White House might call for infrastructure investments designed to spur productivity, hopefully offsetting inflationary pressures over the medium term. However, inflation won’t be determined by political will alone. It will reflect global supply chain resilience, energy market stability, labor market dynamics, and the velocity of capital moving into new technologies – including AI and decentralized technologies.

SR: There’s a lot of truth to this theory: you only need to look back to the “stimmy checks” that were handed out during lockdown, many of which were reinvested into Robinhood or whatever Coinbase was listing. When money is easier to obtain, it’s easier to freely spend – particularly when you believe, correctly or otherwise, that you will turn a profit with which to comfortably pay off your low interest loan.

And when interest rates are low, remember, the returns on traditional savings accounts and bonds also decrease, making them less attractive. Why would you want to earn 2% a year in some dull fixed-income investment account when you could just long Solana or buy Bitcoin? I’m not suggesting that every consumer is thinking in those terms, but it’s easy to see why crypto thrives in a low interest rate environment.

Lower interest rates often create a risk-on sentiment in the markets, where investors are more willing to take on risk in pursuit of higher returns. This shift in sentiment affects not only consumers but also institutional investors, who may allocate more to high-risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. When a large number of investors adopt this risk-seeking behavior, it can create bullish momentum – and make memecoin traders insanely rich, further heightening the FOMO.

SR: Inflation is complex, driven by supply chain frictions, commodity prices, labor costs, currency fluctuations, and shifting consumer patterns. Something I’m acutely aware of from my work with Truflation is that inflation isn’t any one thing: it’s everything. It’s the rent we pay, it’s the gas we put in our cars, the takeout we order, and the groceries we buy. It’s only through being able to see the full picture that we can appreciate the extent to which inflation may be eroding our purchasing power and diminishing our savings.

For this reason, inflation indexes that aggregate data points are particularly valuable in getting a handle on the true price of inflation, as are personal calculators and similar tools that enable people to identify in real teams how much their bottom line is being affected. It’s also useful to be able to consult indexes tracking alternative assets, including Bitcoin, Gold, and Oil, that allow individuals to identify the extent to which they’re able to make financial decisions that will counter the pernicious effects of inflation through investing in markets that aren’t reliant on the number of greenbacks the Fed elects to print.

It’s also worth remembering that inflation isn’t just about rising prices; it’s about the balance between incomes and costs. Increases in wage growth without corresponding productivity gains can exacerbate inflation. Conversely, productivity improvements can absorb higher wages without spurring price hikes. It’s useful to monitor these ratios to gauge whether inflationary pressures are cyclical or structural.

SR: My open letter to the US Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) was both a call for dialogue and a challenge to reimagine how we measure and manage our economy’s health. Traditional methods of data gathering and policy formulation can feel like steering a ship by looking only at yesterday’s charts. I wanted D.O.G.E. to recognize that we possess extraordinary new capabilities for obtaining real-time, nuanced metrics about inflation, productivity, and capital flows.

At a time when tokenized ecosystems, AI-driven analytics, and on-chain data can provide immediate, transparent, and tamper-resistant information, it’s indefensible to rely solely on delayed government reports or stale macroeconomic assumptions. My aim was to show that platforms like Truflation offer a richer, more dynamic lens. Through these tools, policymakers as well as the US people can see near-instantaneous shifts in spending power, labor markets, and consumer patterns.

Ultimately, my hope is that D.O.G.E will embrace a data-driven, pro-tech approach, in keeping with its forward-thinking principles that jettison the old, ossified way of doing things. By recognizing that today’s digital infrastructure is as essential as roads or ports, D.O.G.E. can help guide the nation into an era of smarter, more responsive policy, where decisions aren’t only informed by the past but illuminated by the needs of the present.

SR: The Truflation Hedge Index monitors the prices of five essential asset classes, covering equities, precious metals, commodities, and currencies. It includes assets like oil, gold, silver, Bitcoin, and the S&P 500, each weighted differently – 10% of the index is formed of BTC for example. The index is an invaluable resource for assessing how alternative assets can help protect investors against inflationary pressures.

In addition, the Truflation Hedge Index provides a way to effectively tokenize real-world assets. DeFi protocols can utilize price feeds from the assets within the index to develop decentralized financial products. They can even combine these assets into a diversified basket, tradable as a single token or onchain index. For investors, this is handy because it provides exposure to multiple real-world assets (RWAs) in a convenient, consolidated form, eliminating the need to buy and manage each asset individually.

SR: Yes, at Bitcoin.com, I had the pleasure to work alongside some of the OGs who were there from the very beginning of Bitcoin or close enough. When I became CEO, it was a time when the Bitcoin scaling wars were still rumbling on, the industry was a lot smaller than it is now, and discourse was still dominated by a handful of maverick and often libertarian figures. That ethos fed into the content we produced through the Bitcoin.com newsdesk, where I’m proud of the fact that we consistently strove to publish the truth without fear or favor.

There’s a case for saying, on reflection, that Bitcoin.com wound up spreading itself too thin at one stage by trying to expand into too many verticals. I’m proud to have helped consolidate its operations with the newsdesk at its core, and am pleased to see it remains a beacon of truth and one of the longest-standing media sites in crypto, which is a remarkable achievement.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my time at Bitcoin.com was that it’s good to surround yourself with smart people who sometimes have very different opinions. When it came to founding Truflation, I wasn’t interested in recruiting a bunch of yes men and yes women: I wanted to find people who would challenge me, and provide critical thinking, and original ideas. Whether it’s the intern or the CEO, it’s irrelevant where an idea originates: if it holds weight, it’s valid. We need to build fast and scale and that’s what we’re doing!

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