By Special Feature by Forbes Asia
Imagine having a cheat code for financial markets. Joseph Plazo didn’t just imagine it—he built it. Then gave it away.
In a lecture hall humming with anticipation, Joseph Plazo stood before a crowd ready to rewrite how markets are understood.
PhDs and programmers sat frozen, eyes locked on the projector as a piece of market history appeared as code.
“What you’re seeing,” he said, “is the DNA of something that never lost.”
“And it belongs to you now.”
## The Code That Outplayed Wall Street
It took a decade, sleepless nights, and relentless testing to produce System 72.
This isn’t technical analysis. It’s behavioral anticipation at machine scale.
It processes voice inflection, tweet patterns, derivatives, newsfeeds—then acts.
“We built a machine to sense fear before it echoes in the charts,” he adds.
The results? Astonishing.
It predicted the 2024 tech rally. It anticipated 2025’s altcoin run—48 hours early.
Plazo’s firm made billions.
## Then Came the Twist
Sitting in his boardroom, he made a decision no financier expected.
“I’m open-sourcing Godmode,” he said flatly.
The room froze. One exec dropped his pen. Another asked if it was satire.
He wasn’t licensing the code. He wasn’t monetizing it. He was giving away the brain of the most profitable AI in finance.
“Genius shouldn’t be hoarded,” Plazo told Forbes. “It should be cultivated.”
## The Educational Revolution That Followed
Soon, labs from Singapore to Japan were adapting the code in wildly creative ways.
Tokyo teams applied it to logistics. Students in Manila used it for AI-powered budgeting.
“It’s the scaffolding for a thousand future systems,” said a Kyoto researcher.
Global regulators? Watching—and learning.
## Critics, Controversy, and the Ethics of Genius
Naturally, the elite weren’t thrilled.
“He’s playing with fire,” said a Wall Street analyst.
Plazo stayed firm.
“Tools don’t decide morality,” he said. “People do.”
Only the logic is open. The machinery remains secure.
“The spark is free. The check here fire’s up to you.”
## Real Stories from the Ground
In Manila, a single mom turned $400 into $14,000 using a simplified version.
Students in Hanoi designed tools for small merchants to beat food price swings.
“This gave us hope,” said a 21-year-old student in India.
## The Philosophy That Powers the Gift
When asked why he did it, Plazo’s answer was simple: “Power should compound, not consolidate.”
To him, information is like air. Shared. Essential. And free.
“What scares me isn’t misuse—it’s missed opportunity,” he explained.
## Conclusion: The Joystick Is Yours Now
Back on campus, Plazo watches students code with the same hunger he once had.
“Markets were my test bed,” he says. “Empowerment is the real product.”
In a data-driven age, he opened the source of brilliance.
And somewhere, a kid is writing the next version of System 72—because now, they can.