text: Bitcoin Has Swung 10% In Seven Days -- Is It Really More Stable?
  Sep 3, 2018, 02:46am EDT |
  Balloons with a bitcoin logo at the DeeCrypto retail store selling cryptocurrency mining equipment.... [+] Photo credit: Artyom GeodakyanTASS via Getty Images)
  Later this month the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is due to make a decision on whether to grant approval for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund — something the SEC has previously rejected due to fears around bitcoin's wild price swings and price manipulation.
  The bitcoin price has swung from under $6,000 to almost $8,500 over the last three months.
  "Before institutional firms were actively trading crypto or heavily involved (before 2018) bitcoin price differences between exchanges varied as high as 4.5%," Danny Kim, head of growth at SFOX, told Business Insider.
  Bitcoin short positions have more than doubled since the beginning of the year.
  A lot of overly confident short positions mean the bitcoin price can be pushed quickly higher, due to so-called short squeezes — and this has already happened a few times in the last few months.
  "As this trend continues, the stabilizing effects of institutional investment will extend beyond price spreads, and on to price fluctuations," Kim said.
  "Eventually, it could even come to the point where bitcoin could come to resemble the stable coins people are looking to for payments and is used for Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision: a "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."
  Last month SFOX announced the closure of a $22.7 million Series A funding round with participation from Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk and is aiming to make it easier for institutions to "trade from a single account" and "buy and sell high volumes without impacting prices".