This is what Wall Street call "price discovery". Its the point where they cant suppress the price any longer.
But the issue remains: will it go up from there? Will this bottom go up? Or will the price keeps swinging over it?
Weve been here so many times this year, and seeing the previous price movement, always a bounce back after hitting this level. Maybe the theory of the OP is right since the support level are strong between the price range of $5k-$6k where buyers and sellers agreed the bottom price. No one can answer your question but as an optimist hodler, Maybe we see a new bottom but I know it will to rise again.
IMO institutional investors have buys just under the $6000 mark. Which is why it's holding above that level. What is missing is retail investors - they've been scared away by the price drop from $20,000 plus all the drama with fees at the end of last year.
We need some big investors in current time, which can give some boost to bitcoin price. Once the bitcoin price will start increasing then the retailer will also get some confident and will hopefully start buying bitcoin, which is in fact too much important for the bitcoin price.
Big investors know when they should start accumulating and this may actually be the accumulation period as the case may be. Like Cellard said, it is possible we already have the bigger players who are trying as much as possible to not see the value go down below what would not pay them as miners as we move on.
For what it is worth, I guess we can pretty much assume that this point forward, we may actually start consolidating and swinging between this price range until the market is ready to pick up eventually.
And a big pop down again. This is the life we are living right now, going up and down quickly in all directions without doing much in the sense of a bear or bull run.
The 10% quick going up and down can't be considered a bear or bull run in neither direction its just daily regular price fluctuations so we are stuck at this level for a long time just watching it without actually getting our hopes up for anything.
It is incredible that we have not seen a movement to any direction with like 20% for months now, I would expect something as volatile as bitcoin and crypto to actually have insane movements but no we are at the land of death just waiting for any moves. The last quarter 2018 must be different as per many people's expectation. I am also expecting a new ATH within this year. It may sound greed but anything will be possible in this market hence there could not be any mistake in my expectations.