The Financial Services Commission notified investigative agencies of two cases of virtual asset price manipulation. The financial authorities detected price manipulation schemes involving the concentrated placement of high-priced buy orders and the use of API (application programming interface) keys from multiple accounts.
The Financial Services Commission said on the 29th that it resolved at the 8th regular meeting to notify investigative agencies of suspects in two virtual asset market price rigging cases.
In the first case, the suspect pre-purchased a large amount of a specific virtual asset and then submitted a concentrated burst of price-manipulative orders, including high-priced buys, over a short period to drive up the price before selling the holdings. In the second case, the suspect paid a fee to borrow API keys for multiple accounts at a virtual asset exchange and manipulated prices through collusive trades between these accounts and sequential high-priced buys by account.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said API keys can only be used by the user, so care must be taken to prevent them from being exposed externally. It added that providing or lending API keys to others may result in measures such as blocking service access or restricting API services by the virtual asset exchange.
An official at the financial authorities said, "We are continuously monitoring unfair transactions in the virtual asset market, and as soon as we detect suspicious transactions, we commence an investigation and take action," adding, "Users should refrain from chasing buys of virtual assets whose prices or volumes surge without reasonable grounds."