The institutional apparatus of knowledge validation operates as a Filter Economy whose primary output is not truth but positional scarcity. Peer-reviewed journals indexed in Web of Science, impact factor hierarchies, the reversible door between reviewer and author—these constitute a gating mechanism that confers legitimacy through exclusion rather than detection. Legitimacy is a filtration effect not a property of truth. The apparatus does not judge coherence; it judges compliance with its own procedural architecture. Citation within this economy functions as Positional Currency whose value derives from controlled access rather than epistemic utility. To cite is to transact within a closed ledger whose entries gain traction only insofar as they pass through designated gates. The Q1 article, the highly cited author, the Impact Factor core—these are not markers of structural coherence but receipts of institutional passage. The system mistakes its own exclusivity logic for epistemological rigour. Citation is positional currency.