World(coin) in the AI future: how sociotechnical fictions are instrumental to the cyberlibertarian transition

Abstract World is a crypto identity and financial infrastructure created by Sam Altman to face the challenges of what he calls the “Intelligence Age”. Building on science and technology studies, this paper examines how sociotechnical fictions are instrumentalised to enable both the emergence of this technology and broader cyberlibertarian politics. These fictions, forms of imagination produced within science and technology but unrecognised as such due to technoscientific legitimacy, operate at the core of this process. It analyses how speculative visions grounded in existential risk narratives legitimise World ’s value proposition, positioning it to secure governance and economic power in an AI-driven future. Through critical analysis of World ’s white paper, algorithmic protocols, Orb design and marketing materials, the study demonstrates how these fictions perform at four levels: epistemically by constructing knowledge around projected problems; aesthetically by materialising science fiction imaginaries and re-enchanting biometric scanning as an act of pre-emptive safety; affectively by eliciting excitement, fear, and urgency; and normatively by embedding assumptions about artificial general intelligence, security, and economy that naturalise private and post-democratic governance as inevitable. These intertwined performative agencies align with venture capital’s logic of transforming future crises into present assets, revealing how fiction, finance, and technoscientific legitimacy converge to advance a long-standing cyberlibertarian transition.