South Korea Enhances AI Capabilities to Combat Crypto Market Manipulation
South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is making significant strides in its efforts to detect and prevent crypto market manipulation by upgrading its AI-powered VISTA platform. The initiative involves integrating additional Nvidia H100 GPUs, which are designed to enhance real-time analysis of trading activities. This upgrade aims to improve the agency’s ability to monitor suspicious accounts and identify anomalies in the virtual asset market.
The FSS has allocated 170 million Korean won ($117,640 USD) for internal server expansion this year. The budget is intended to acquire an additional H100 GPU by the second quarter of 2025. Although the H100 was released in 2022, it remains one of the most widely used GPUs for AI training due to its high-performance computing capabilities.
VISTA Platform Upgrades
In 2024, the FSS launched the VISTA platform, a specialized AI system designed to investigate unfair virtual asset transactions. Last year, the agency purchased two H100s and secured a budget of 220 million Korean won ($152,240 USD) for server expansion. This allowed the FSS to refine the platform’s capabilities.
The new algorithm within VISTA examines every potential sub-period in a trading record using a sliding-window grid search. This method enables a thorough examination of possible manipulation windows that investigators previously had to identify manually. According to the FSS, performance testing on completed investigation cases showed that the technology identified all previously reported manipulation periods and flagged additional suspect intervals that were difficult to detect with traditional analysis.
Expanding AI Capabilities
The FSS has set several goals for this year, including improving the platform’s capacity to identify questionable accounts involved in coordinated market manipulation. Additionally, the agency aims to develop a large language model (LLM) capable of analyzing messages that conspire to trade virtual assets unfairly.
The watchdog is also reviewing the creation of an independent AI system to track real-time trends in the virtual asset market and spot anomalous transaction patterns. For instance, the AI could detect abnormalities if the price of a significant virtual asset abruptly increased or decreased. Once operational, this system would allow the FSS to promptly confirm whether unusual transactions were caused by technical issues at specific exchanges. Currently, the FSS receives virtual asset market trend data only once a day.
An insider from the FSS stated, “If further AI enhancements are deemed necessary, the agency will pursue additional GPU acquisitions.”
Growing Concerns Over Crypto Transactions
The AI improvements align with the regulator’s broader goal of enhancing enforcement capabilities in the crypto space. On January 6, a local news outlet reported that the Financial Supervisory Service was developing a payment suspension system that would stop transactions before suspects could launder ill-gotten funds.
South Korea has witnessed a surge in crypto transactions, prompting the FSS to accelerate its AI improvements. The agency noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to manually track capital transfers due to the rising use of digital transaction methods.
A report dated September 22, 2025, revealed that South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit flagged over 36,000 suspicious crypto transactions in 2025. This figure surpassed the total reported in 2023 and 2024 combined. Local virtual asset service providers filed 36,684 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) between January and August 2025, exceeding the 35,734 STRs reported in the previous two years, according to Yonhap News, citing data from the FIU and the Korea Customs Service (KCS).
FIU officials indicated that there were only 199 flagged cases in 2021, 10,797 in 2022, 16,076 in 2023, and 19,658 in 2024. The previous record almost doubled in last year’s count.
According to customs officials, 9.56 trillion won, or roughly $7.1 billion, in cases involving virtual assets were referred to prosecutors between 2021 and August 2025. Approximately 90% of this, or 8.62 trillion won, was connected to “hwanchigi” scams, where operators use cryptocurrency to transfer money abroad without going through banks.