South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service to Investigate Cryptocurrency Market Manipulation

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has announced plans to investigate accounts exhibiting abnormal trading patterns in the cryptocurrency market. According to Foresight News, the FSS has identified several unfair trading practices involving API-based automated order placements, which currently account for over 30% of the market's trading volume in South Korea. The FSS outlined four primary manipulation techniques: creating a false sense of trading activity through repeated small market orders while manually placing high-priced limit orders to inflate prices; pre-setting sell orders above the holding price and using APIs to place high-priced limit buy orders to reach target prices for profit; repeatedly placing and canceling orders to create fake buy interest; and using multiple accounts to distort the market. Investors are advised to be cautious of significant price fluctuations around the time exchanges reset prices, as this is when high-frequency API trading is most concentrated. The FSS also warned that if an API key is leaked, the holder could unknowingly become an accomplice to illegal activities such as money laundering.