Most people by now have heard of cryptocurrencies. These are digital assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which use blockchain technology to record ownership and transactions in a secure, decentralised ledger. These assets are celebrated for making trust possible without central authorities, reducing transactions to cryptographic proof on a public, immutable chain. Yet the world of blockchain is, at its core, a universe of one-dimensional records: each token or coin is a point of value, transferred and re-transferred, but always blind to the world in which it moves.

Are Digital Twins an evolved notion of Cryptocurrencies?

Now, contrast this with digital twins. A digital twin is a dynamic, multi-layered digital model of a real-world system, whether it be an energy grid, a river basin, a building, or even an entire city. Unlike a blockchain token, which only says “who owns what, when”, a digital twin sees, senses, and simulates how things are behaving, why they change, and what interventions might make a difference. When powered by digital threads—effectively continuous flows of data linking assets, events, processes, and people—digital twins are not just passive mirrors, but active agents: they inform decisions, anticipate failures, coordinate repairs, and can even heal themselves.

Why does this distinction matter for our future? Because the next wave of innovation will be won not by those who simply transact, but by those who can steward, adapt, and orchestrate the living complexity of our world. If cryptocurrencies showed that value can be freed from banks, digital twins show that value itself is far richer than a number on a ledger. The future monetary system will need to be multi-dimensional, evolving with the health and behaviour of the very systems that underpin our economies—this includes energy, water, transport, ecosystems, and the shared resources of our planet.

Monetary Systems for a Digital Earth

The frameworks emerging from the Digital Earth movement give us a glimpse of what this could look like. Imagine a certified digital twin of a city, operating as an open, trusted source not just for physical assets, but for the resilience of its infrastructure, the vitality of its communities, and the sustainability of its resource flows. Such a system could enable novel forms of value exchange: carbon credits issued and retired automatically as emissions are verified in real time, water usage priced according to actual scarcity and ecological impact, even local currencies reflecting the well-being of a community’s environment. These are not hypothetical; pilot projects in Australia’s Digital Earth initiatives, and smart city platforms in Singapore and the Nordics, are already beginning to use digital twins to inform energy balancing, water conservation, and dynamic pricing.

Cryptocurrency blockchains, for all their brilliance, do not “know” the context of their assets. A Bitcoin does not care if it comes from green energy or coal; a smart contract cannot yet sense whether the river is drying up, or if a city is about to flood. Digital twins, by contrast, can be embedded with rules, learning systems, and real-time feedback, so that when a risk is detected, say, in demand-side management for a regional energy grid, the system can shift loads, trigger distributed batteries, and rebalance supply without human intervention. This is self-healing in action, and it’s already being explored in advanced infrastructure networks.

Of course, these visions are not without challenges. Scaling digital twins from buildings or local assets to entire regions, nations, or planetary systems raises real questions about data quality, privacy, interoperability, and governance. Unlike blockchain, which was designed to be trustless, digital twins must be trustworthy. This means certification, open standards, transparent algorithms, and clear lines of institutional accountability, all of which are central to the ISDE’s Strategic Vision for Digital Earth.

AI beyond LLMs

What will accelerate this evolution is the rapid progress in artificial intelligence. Today’s large language models can generate text and images, but the next generation of AI, so-called “world models”, will reason, simulate, and adapt in real time. When these world models are embedded within digital twins, the possibilities expand dramatically. AI-enabled digital twins could become planetary-scale sentinels, orchestrating demand and supply, detecting emerging risks, and even brokering value exchanges based on real-world performance and needs. Already, researchers at major institutes and forward-thinking companies are experimenting with AI agents that negotiate energy use, water rights, and ecosystem services, all grounded in digital twins that sense and model the world.

There is a growing body of research and practical experimentation to support this shift. For example, Australia’s Open Data Cube and Singapore’s national smart city platforms have shown how real-time data and digital twins can drive efficient management of water, land, and infrastructure, while the Digital Twin Consortium and ISDE are laying the conceptual and ethical foundations for scalable, interoperable, and trustworthy systems.

The true power of digital twins is not that they replace cryptocurrencies or blockchains, but that they move us beyond one-dimensional abstractions to living, adaptive representations of value. These are systems that can recognise when an asset is not just owned, but maintained, improved, or even restored. This is the leap from mere transaction to stewardship, from static records to active, generative intelligence.

Rethinking the Future

If we are serious about building a future monetary system that reflects not just economic value, but planetary health and human flourishing, then we must look to the multi-dimensional logic of digital twins, woven together by digital threads, and governed by the principles of openness, trust, and ethical care. The challenge is significant, but the opportunity is profound: to create a Digital Earth where value is measured not just by what we own, but by what we sustain, regenerate, and pass forward to future generations.

Only by making this leap can we move beyond the limits of the blockchain and step confidently into the era of planetary stewardship. The future of value is not a coin; it is a living map, evolving with us and the world we inhabit.