South Korea’s FSS will be rolling out AI-assisted tracking to identify crypto manipulation as it happens.
The Financial Supervisory Service renewed its VISTA system to add more Nvidia H100 GPUs to enhance the control of suspicious trading and accounts.
Officials have claimed that there has been an increase in flagged transactions of virtual assets, and hence, their development has been accelerated through AI that will enhance surveillance of the market.
This year, the FSS dedicated 170 million Korean won to the expansion of internal servers and the purchase of one more H100 GPU.
These powerful GPUs are popular in AI training and improve the processing speed of trading data in the platform through large amounts of data.
AI improvements on market manipulations
VISTA was initially launched by FSS in 2024 to examine unfair transactions of virtual assets.
In 2009, the agency bought two H100 GPUs and got 220 million Korean won to extend its servers.
The AI is now used to search through trading data to identify possible manipulation periods using a sliding-window grid search.
The given method facilitates the process of identifying suspicious intervals that used to be identified manually.
Tests of actual performances conducted on completed investigations proved that the system is able to identify all the manipulation periods that have been reported in the past.
It also identifies new intervals between suspects that may not be identified using other methods.
The FSS has further intended to refine VISTA to detect coordinated market manipulation and process messages that could affect unjust trading of virtual assets.
Another AI system is also under consideration in the agency to track the dynamic market trends and identify suspicious transactions, like immediate price jumps or slumps.
As it stands, the market trend data is updated on a daily basis.
According to an FSS insider, the agency can purchase more GPUs in case AI capabilities require additional improvement.
These additions augment other enforcement techniques, such as a suggested payment suspension mechanism that may prevent suspect transactions prior to the laundering of funds.
Explosion of suspicious cryptocurrency activity
The South Korean authorities cited that more digital transactions, as a result of larger volumes, are difficult to monitor manually.
This is 36,684 suspicious transaction reports that local virtual asset providers have already made between January and August 2025, exceeding the total number in 2023 and 2024.
According to the data of the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Korea Customs Service, there has been a drastic increase in flagged cases during the last several years.
In 2021, the FIU had 199 cases, 10,797 in 2022, 16,076 in 2023, and 19,658 in 2024.
Officials of the customs indicated that 9.56 trillion won of virtual asset cases were sent to prosecutors during 2021 and August 2025.
Only about 90% of some 8.62 trillion won was of the type of scam called hwanchigi.
The schemes involve the transfer of money across country borders in cryptocurrency without necessarily using the conventional banking system, which has exposed weaknesses of cross-border virtual asset flows.
Enhancing real-time monitoring
The FSS insists that AI-based surveillance will enhance the enforcement potential of the agency.
With the integration of powerful computer graphics cards and new algorithms, the authorities are likely to find manipulation sooner and minimize risks in the crypto market.
It is hoped that with real-time surveillance, transparency, and exclusion of illicit trading will be increased, which will strengthen the regulation of South Korea’s growing virtual asset industry.
The AI upgrades belong to a wider plan of staying faithful to the market integrity as the digital assets will become more a part and parcel of the financial system.
Based on the statement of officials, it is clear that ongoing investment in technologies is needed to remain on track with advanced methods of crypto crime.
