South Korea Unleashes AI “VISTA” on Crypto Markets: Nvidia H100 Upgrade to Target Manipulation
South Korea’s financial watchdog, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), is taking a serious crack at combating digital asset manipulation
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Last updated: Monday, February 16, 2026
Quick overview
- South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is enhancing its AI-driven surveillance platform, VISTA, to combat digital asset manipulation.
- The FSS has allocated $117,640 for additional Nvidia H100 GPUs to improve real-time analysis capabilities by 2026.
- VISTA's advanced algorithm has successfully flagged all manipulation periods in backtests and significantly reduced investigation time.
- With a surge in crypto crime, the FSS plans to implement live alerts and AI monitoring of social media to detect fraudulent activities.
South Korea’s financial watchdog, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), is taking a serious crack at combating digital asset manipulation. They’re stepping up their AI-driven surveillance platform, VISTA (Virtual Assets Intelligence System for Trading Analysis), with the latest – and some of the best – hardware around, plus some very clever tricks to get into the nation’s crypto exchanges and weed out the bad stuff.
A Big Upgrade: Nvidia H100s Galore
To stay one step ahead in the real-time game, the FSS has earmarked 117,640 dollars – 170 million won to be precise – to get some extra Nvidia H100 GPUs in place by the second quarter of 2026.
- More Power: That’s in addition to the 220 million won they spent last year on two of these units.
- What They Want: While the H100 isn’t the latest and greatest model in 2026, its massive memory makes it the go-to for training the agency’s own Large Language Models (LLMs) to scan millions of dodgy chat logs and suspicious transactions.
What Makes VISTA Tick
At VISTA’s heart is a super-smart algorithm that has completely replaced traditional manual investigation methods. This little gem uses a sliding-window grid search to examine every possible sub-period in a trading dataset – and then ferrets out anomalies that all the usual statistical tests just can’t pick up.
How’s It Going?
- Spotting the Scammers: VISTA has a fantastic track record – it has flagged 100% of manipulation periods in backtests on cases we know about.
- New Insights: The AI has even found some “hidden” suspect timeframes that human investigators really didn’t notice before.
- Speed: What used to take weeks of slogging through spreadsheets is now done in no time at all – nearly in real-time.
The “Hwanchigi” Epidemic: One Big Problem
The agency’s upgrade arrives just as South Korea is facing one massive issue – crypto crime is on the up. Between January and August 2025 alone, there were over 36,684 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) filed. That’s way more than the total number of reports for the previous two years put together.
And around 90% of all the $7.1 billion in cases referred to the prosecutors is because of “hwanchigi” – where some scoundrels are using cryptocurrency to move money abroad without going through the usual banking channels and capital controls.
The Scale of the Underground Economy
| Metric | 2021 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 (to Aug) |
|
Flagged STRs
|
199 | 16,076 | 19,658 |
36,684
|
|
Hwanchigi Value
|
– | – | – |
$6.4 Billion
|
Roughly 90% of the $7.1 billion in cases referred to prosecutors involve “hwanchigi”—illegal foreign exchange remittances where operators use cryptocurrency to move money abroad, bypassing traditional banking channels and capital controls.
2026 Roadmap: More Than Just Looking Over Past Data
he FSS is looking to the future too. Their plans for 2026 include:
- Getting to the Source: Using all sorts of graph-based clustering to identify network of scammers using “wash trading” accounts.
- Live Alerts: Moving from daily data updates to a live streaming system to flag up price spikes within seconds.
- Watching the Chat: Developing an AI to scan social media messages to spot evidence of “pump and dump” schemes.
A Global Standard
South Korea is setting the bar for the rest of the world when it comes to automated crypto enforcement – while the EU’s MiCA framework is still being worked on, the FSS has already moved on to a fully automated model.
One insider at the FSS says, “If we need to get even more advanced, then the agency will do whatever it takes to get the latest AI – and we’ll get to a point where the algorithm is calling the shots, not just helping out the investigators.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Arslan Butt
Lead Markets Analyst – Multi-Asset (FX, Commodities, Crypto)
Arslan Butt serves as the Lead Commodities and Indices Analyst, bringing a wealth of expertise to the field. With an MBA in Behavioral Finance and active progress towards a Ph.D., Arslan possesses a deep understanding of market dynamics.
His professional journey includes a significant role as a senior analyst at a leading brokerage firm, complementing his extensive experience as a market analyst and day trader. Adept in educating others, Arslan has a commendable track record as an instructor and public speaker.
His incisive analyses, particularly within the realms of cryptocurrency and forex markets, are showcased across esteemed financial publications such as ForexCrunch, InsideBitcoins, and EconomyWatch, solidifying his reputation in the financial community.
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