Svmuu News: The Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea announced today the results of its virtual asset market oversight, stating that regulators have focused on cracking down on behaviors that disrupt market order, such as short-term manipulation and “pump-and-dump” schemes. Among the cases reported so far, price manipulation cases account for the majority. The Financial Services Commission stated that in the two years since the Virtual Asset User Protection Act took effect, it has completed investigations into approximately 40 cases of unfair virtual asset trading and referred or reported more than 30 cases to judicial authorities, the majority of which involved price manipulation.
In addition, regulators have investigated cases involving short-term manipulation through the misuse of API keys, price manipulation in collusion with project issuers, and large-scale manipulation by “whales” exploiting cross-exchange trading on overseas platforms. Some fraudulent trading cases involved project teams spreading false information via social media to lure investors into buying, as well as arbitrage manipulation exploiting price correlations between USDT and BTC markets on exchanges.
To date, South Korean regulators have referred a total of 25 individuals suspected of violations to judicial authorities, with average illegal profits per case amounting to approximately 1.4 billion won. Among these, eight cases involved illegal profits ranging from 500 million to 5 billion won, and one case exceeded 5 billion won. Given the distinct characteristics of short-term manipulation, the virtual assets involved in each case averaged approximately eight different cryptocurrencies.
In terms of recovering illicit gains, South Korean financial regulators have imposed fines in two cases—one involving fraudulent trading and one involving price manipulation—with the fines ranging from 125% to 165% of the illegal profits.
The Financial Services Commission of South Korea stated that it will further strengthen market surveillance capabilities in the future by introducing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based virtual asset regulatory system. This system will include features such as real-time market monitoring, price manipulation analysis within seconds, and automatic identification of suspicious accounts and trading ranges, with the aim of enhancing the ability to detect abnormal transactions at an early stage. At the same time, South Korean regulators plan to introduce a mechanism for freezing accounts holding illicit proceeds, as well as a reporting and reward system for unfair trading, in future digital asset-related legislation to further refine the virtual asset market regulatory framework. (KBS)