In engineering, a digital twin mirrors a physical system closely enough to test it safely. Financial systems are harder to mirror: they are larger, their participants react to each other, and the most important links are often the least visible.
What the explorer models
Five institutions, a bank, an investment fund, a digital-asset exchange, a stablecoin issuer and households and firms, hold claims on each other. You choose how much short-term funding is withdrawn, how concentrated the bank’s lending is, and how far risky asset prices fall. Losses then pass along the exposures once.
What it can teach
- Concentration turns one institution’s problem into another’s: raise it and watch stress jump from the fund to the bank.
- Liquidity and solvency are different failures. An institution can have enough capital and still be unable to meet outflows today.
- Combined shocks are worse than the sum of their parts, because they hit buffers that are already thinner.
What it cannot do
It has no time dimension, no central bank, no fire-sale spiral beyond one round, and invented balance sheets. It describes no real institution. Its value is that every number can be traced back to an input you set.