On January 16, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea reported the first unfair trading case after the implementation of the "Virtual Asset User Protection Act". The act, which came into effect in July 2024, requires local virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to report suspicious transactions and investigate unfair trading patterns.
According to the FSC, the suspects used a "pump and dump" scheme to manipulate the market. They initiated multiple buy orders to artificially inflate the price of a certain cryptocurrency, and then sold the large amount of assets they had previously purchased. The entire manipulation process was typically completed within 10 minutes, resulting in violent price fluctuations of the underlying asset and illegal profits of hundreds of millions of Korean won within a month.
