In his book Paranoid Finance, sociologist Fabian Muniesa observes a critical correspondence between the radical fantasies of financial and technological “reset” seen in contemporary conspiratorialist culture (e.g., Nesara, the QAnon syndrome, the sovereign citizen movement) and the extremist imaginaries of currency, information, energy, value, and intelligence detected in dominant innovation milieus (e.g., Silicon Valley ideology, “deep tech” venture capital, Peter Thiel’s eschatology).
At the center of this correspondence lies a complex paradox: a tension linking ideals of liberty (personal sovereignty, private property, voluntary contract, individual strength, unbound energy, acclamatory democracy) to ideals of authority (executive will, implacable decision, charismatic leadership, unmanageable pluralism, access control, summary justice, external menace, internal enemy). The resolution of this tension, Muniesa argues, is best decoded in terms of fascist propensity.
In this talk, recorded BESI on February 26, 2026, Muniesa illustrates this hypothesis using the case of the “Quantum Financial System.” Originally a fringe millennialist, conspiratorial fantasy, the Quantum Financial System has become mainstream as a popular interpretation of the coming “fintech” miracle.
