During a parliamentary inspection on October 18th, a member of the South Korean Democratic Party criticized Lee Bok-hyeon, the Director of the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea (FSS), for not protecting investors while still granting licenses for the listing of “Burger Coins,” with SUI being a prominent example, on exchanges. This comes after the FSS accused the Sui Foundation of manipulating the circulating supply of the project’s tokens.
According to Representative Min Byung-deok, the circulating supply is one of the factors that has prevented the price of SUI from rising. Furthermore, he accused the Sui Foundation of being involved in staking, followed by releasing tokens into the market, increasing circulation and causing a price “dump.”
In response to the lawmaker’s criticism, Director Lee admitted that if what Min Byung-deok pointed out is accurate, they would investigate the situation of supply manipulation in SUI.
Previously, Sui had faced accusations of “wash-selling” staking rewards from locked SUI on Binance, although the project denied these allegations. At that time, the community also questioned the lack of transparency in the token allocation plan and token unlock schedule.
Following this news, SUI experienced a significant drop of nearly 15%, from around $0.43 to $0.36 USD. In South Korea, SUI is listed on five exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Kobit, and Gopax.
However, in response to the FSS’s accusations, the Sui Foundation denied any supply manipulation of SUI and selling SUI from staking, asserting transparency in their token transfer activities. The Sui Foundation stated that they are closely working with DAXA to ensure compliance with South Korean laws.
Sui is known as a blockchain that uses the Move programming language developed by Facebook, similar to Aptos. In 2022, the project raised $300 million with a valuation of up to $2 billion. However, SUI has consistently lost value after its mainnet launch, mainly due to selling pressure from token unlocks for the Community Reserve.