South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has announced a significant expansion in digital asset monitoring with AI, integrating advanced algorithms to detect irregularities in the crypto market. According to Monday’s official statement, the regulator has upgraded its Virtual Assets Intelligence System for Trading Analysis (VISTA) to automate the identification of fraud.
The implementation of the “sliding-window grid search” algorithm allows the system to exhaustively examine every trading sub-period, eliminating reliance on manual investigations that traditionally delayed processes. Thanks to this Blockchain technology, the FSS can identify price manipulation windows that previously might have gone unnoticed by human analysts due to their complexity.
Furthermore, the regulator has secured a budget of 170 million won for the year 2026, exclusively destined to boost the data processing capabilities of its servers. Likewise, the deployment of tools that automatically identify coordinated account networks is planned, tracing the origin of funds used in manipulation schemes across thousands of digital assets.
What preventive measures accompany this technological evolution?
In parallel with the VISTA system upgrade, financial authorities are evaluating the implementation of a “payment suspension” mechanism to preemptively freeze suspicious accounts. This initiative seeks to block transactions before criminals manage to launder illicitly obtained gains, replicating tools that already operate successfully in South Korea’s traditional stock market.
In addition, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) confirmed that the Korea Exchange will begin using an AI-driven surveillance system to analyze content on social media and YouTube, detecting false rumors. In this way, the integration of blockchain technology with automated oversight processes aims to create a more transparent environment, protecting retail investors from coordinated “pump and dump” practices.
Finally, the FSS projects the completion of Large Language Model (LLM) integration by late 2026, which will allow for the interpretation of abnormal trading-related texts. While regulation advances, the South Korean approach demonstrates that the security of the modern financial ecosystem will depend on the immediate response capacity that only artificial intelligence can provide against the sophistication of digital crime.
