Stablecoins & blockchain
Crypto, with a bank's experience
Digital Twin controls individual crypto balances off-chain — the way major exchanges do. If you hold a USDC, BTC or ETH balance at an exchange, it isn't specified whether it sits on Solana or Polygon and, better still, you can send it to a friend regardless of which blockchain they want to receive it on. That works because your money is off-chain, with privacy — nobody can see your balance on a public blockchain scanner.
This is the model Digital Twin adopts: crypto balances are simply another asset in the multi-asset ledger, with the same banking experience as fiat balances.
Bank wallets and custody
The blockchain wallets belong to the bank. The best-known are the hot wallet and the cold wallet. Every outbound transfer from any user originates from the same hot wallet — whether John or Jane sends 5 USDC over Solana, both transactions leave the same hot wallet, but each affects a different account in Digital Twin.
Hot wallet
Source of all outbound transfers. Every user's send leaves from here.
Cold wallet
Secure storage of the bulk of funds, away from operational use.
Deposit wallets (per user, per blockchain)
The blockchain adaptor creates one or more addresses for each user, on each desired blockchain. The wallet behind the address belongs to the bank — it exists only to know who is receiving, reconciling the deposit with the user. Once we know who received, Digital Twin is credited and the funds are swept from the deposit wallet to the hot or cold wallet (a business decision).
Deposit wallets do not give the user custody — they are only reconciliation rails. Privacy and balance control stay off-chain, in Digital Twin.
Digital Twin doesn't talk to the blockchain directly
Digital Twin holds no private keys and cannot, on its own, send funds from the hot wallet. In general we work through a custody provider such as Circle, Fireblocks or Utila. They hold the keys and actually talk to the blockchain when Digital Twin's blockchain adaptor calls their APIs. They have cosigners and other security mechanisms that protect the blockchain even against whoever might take control of Digital Twin. Digital Twin ships off-the-shelf integrated with the relevant custody providers.
Fireblocks
MPC custody and digital-asset movement for treasury and institutional flows.
Circle
USDC issuance and settlement — send, receive and pay with USDC worldwide.
Utila
Institutional digital-asset custody and operational wallet management.
Self-custody
For institutions that run their own keys and on-chain infrastructure.
Moving between fiat and crypto
To move funds between fiat and crypto, Digital Twin's account orchestrator can make a debit of 5 USD and a credit of 5 USDC, for example. The USD is deducted in the external core banking and the USDC is credited in Digital Twin.
Orchestration — buy 5 USDC with 5 USD
ACC-USD-001 · Available (external core)− 5.00
ACC-USDC-001 · Available (Digital Twin)+ 5.00
In other words: for stablecoin and crypto, Digital Twin does not need to be the twin of the mainframe's DDA. Here the purpose is not to make the DDA 24×7 — it is to offer crypto within the same banking experience.
Two approaches of Digital Twin
This breaks the idea that Digital Twin is always a shadow of the mainframe. In fact it has two approaches — and they can be combined.
Approach 1 — Shadow ledger
Shadow the mainframe DDA
Single purpose: make the mainframe DDA available 24×7 for the user, even when the mainframe is down.
Approach 2 — Crypto-native
Offer crypto in the banking experience
Crypto balances live natively in Digital Twin, with no need to shadow the mainframe. The purpose is to deliver crypto to the user with the same banking UX.
The two approaches combine: you can have both USD and USDC 24×7, shadowing USD into Digital Twin. But the bank can start without shadowing USD — having only USDC and other cryptos 24×7, keeping USD unavailable during some periods of the day. That is great for proofs of concept (POCs).
Matera · Digital Twin — integration documentation