South Korea's Financial Services Commission has investigated two cases of cryptocurrency market manipulation, and API lenders may be accomplices.

CoinFeed reported on April 29 that, according to Yonhap News Agency's Infomax, South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) decided at its 8th regular meeting to transfer suspects in two cases of virtual asset market manipulation to investigative authorities. The manipulation methods discovered this time combined the traditional stock market's "pump and dump" tactics with the API abuse methods unique to the virtual asset market. The first suspect pre-purchased specific virtual assets, manipulated prices by placing concentrated high-priced buy orders in a short period, and simultaneously set up fake buy orders to prevent price drops, repeatedly selling to profit. The second suspect rented API keys from multiple accounts at a certain cost, created a false impression of active trading through repeated wash trading between multiple accounts, and then used relay-style high-priced orders to drive up prices before selling to retail investors. The FSC warned that if the lent API keys are used for unfair trading or money laundering, the account holders may face civil and criminal liability as accomplices.