By Guest Analyst, Forbes Asia

He built the smartest trading system alive—and gave it away.

A tense silence filled Seoul National University as Joseph Plazo approached the podium—moments before shaking global finance.

The audience was electric—hedge fund analysts beside machine learning prodigies.

Plazo leaned into the mic and said: “What I’m about to teach you—hedge funds would kill to keep hidden.”

He didn’t pitch. He didn’t charge. He gave away a weaponized form of prediction.

## The Unlikely Hero of High Finance

Plazo didn’t climb the ladder through Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley.

He came from the streets of Quezon City—with a secondhand laptop and relentless focus.

“The market is biased—toward those with access,” he once said. “I wanted to balance the scales.”

So he built an AI—not just to track numbers, but to decode fear, greed, and global emotion.

And when the system worked, he gave it away.

## Stealing Fire—and Lighting the World

System 72 wasn’t born overnight. It was sculpted through sleepless decades.

It didn’t crunch numbers. It decoded behavior.

It read tweet tone. It tracked Reddit anxiety. It caught fear curves in options flows.

The result? A prediction engine for emotion-fueled markets.

Analysts described it as AI with a gut instinct.

Rather than gatekeep, he distributed its DNA to the best minds across Asia.

“Make it better than I did,” he said. “And make sure it stays free.”

## Rewriting the Grammar of Capital

Six months later, classrooms became innovation labs.

In Vietnam, students used the model to optimize farm lending systems.

Indonesian engineers used it to balance energy demand across scattered regions.

Kuala Lumpur students used it to shield businesses from forex swings.

This wasn’t open-source software. It was an open-source *philosophy*.

“Prediction shouldn’t be elite,” he told Kyoto students. more info “It should be public literacy.”

## Wall Street’s Whisper Campaign

The finance elite were less than thrilled.

“He’s dangerous,” said one anonymous hedge fund exec. “You don’t hand nukes to kids.”

But the more they warned, the more he taught.

“Power hoards,” he said. “Rebellion shares.”

“This is power redistribution, not philanthropy,” Plazo said.

## The World Tour of Revolution

Since the release, Plazo’s visited campuses, regulators, and classrooms from Manila to Bangkok.

In Manila, he simplified complexity—for 10th graders.

In Jakarta, he helped draft ethical AI guidelines with regulators.

In Thailand, he built hope in three days with laptops and questions.

“The future isn’t built in vaults,” he says. “It’s built in classrooms.”

## Analogy: The Gutenberg of Capital

One AI ethicist in Tokyo called System 72 “the printing press of predictive wealth.”

It flattened what was once a vertical economy of advantage.

When too few speak the market’s language, economies stay unjust.

“Prediction is power,” he says. “Let’s stop treating it like a secret.”

## Legacy Over Luxury

Plazo still runs his billion-dollar firm—but his heart is in the classroom.

His next project blends psychology and prediction into something even more human.

And no, he doesn’t plan to lock it down.

“True wealth is measured by what you enable,” he says.

## Final Note: What Happens When You Hand Over the Code?

He didn’t sell a system. He seeded a future.

Not as theater—but as belief.

They’ll rewrite it.