South Korea Reports First Unfair Trading Case Under New Virtual Asset Law

According to BlockBeats, on January 16, the South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) reported the first case of unfair trading following the implementation of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act. This legislation, which came into effect in July 2024, mandates local virtual asset service providers to report unusual transactions and investigate unfair trading practices. The FSC revealed that the suspect employed a 'pump and dump' strategy to manipulate the market. This involved placing multiple buy orders to artificially inflate the price of a particular cryptocurrency, followed by selling off a large amount of pre-purchased assets. The entire manipulation process typically concluded within 10 minutes, causing significant price fluctuations of the targeted asset and resulting in illegal profits amounting to hundreds of millions of Korean won within a month.