FINTECH AS REGULATORY NIHILISM: Disruption, Strategic Non-Compliance and Sandbox as a containment device

Abstract

This paper makes a unifying argument: a significant share of FinTech innovation is structured as “regulatory nihilism” — a strategic behavior of intentional devaluation of existing normativity when it hinders time-to-market, scalability, and network rent-grabbing. This nihilism is not taken here in a metaphysical sense, but as an institutional translation of a philosophical core: the loss of binding force of values/forms, replaced by performative logics (adoption, growth, liquidity, engagement). In the absence of governance tools capable of operating with times and granularities compatible with digital markets, selective non-compliance becomes rational for the innovator and destabilizing for the system. The main contribution is twofold. First, it proposes a conceptual framework that integrates genealogy of nihilism (Jacobi, Nietzsche, Heidegger) with institutional theory and “code-as-law”, formulating the construct of regulatory nihilism as: (i) arbitrage and forum shopping; (ii) temporal non-compliance (“move fast, regularize later”); (iii) cosmetic compliance; (iv) fragmentation of responsibility along the digital stack. Second, he argues that the regulatory sandbox represents — within a certain perimeter — the only realistic tool for containing nihilistic disruption, since it converts anti-institutional energy into experimentation under constraints, observable data and exit rules. Methodology: interdisciplinary theoretical analysis and institutional comparison of sandbox models (FCA-UK, MAS-Singapore, BCB-Brazil) and the European framework (DLT Pilot Regime; MiCA; DORA). The paper develops a set of testable hypotheses and a design grid to assess efficacy, risks (capture, moral hazard, cyber) and transfer conditions from experiment to market.