Bitcoin has just done a pretty nice movement trying to break the 22,000$ resistance level today. If bitcoin is able to keep this trend we are going to see its best performance in one month time period. Bitcoin needs to keep stable for now in 21,000$ price range, until it can push ahead stronger, breaking the 22,000$ line with success towards 23,000$-24,000$. Once this happens, it's going to be a very motivational reaction in price for investors.
Although bitcoin hiting 18,600$ has its advantages, I don't think it's going to happen... Support is strong at 20,000$. That is just my guess, though. The market is unpredictable and can surprise us at anytime.
We will have to wait and see, we need to understand that even if things could play out like that I think there are many market forces that like the price of bitcoin to be this low, and as such they would like to see it at the current levels for a long time.
And I do not blame them, the price of bitcoin is very attractive and it should be bought by anyone thinking about holding their coins for the long term, so I think whales will use their power over the markets to try to stop any attempt for bitcoin to recover that quickly so they can obtain the biggest benefits out of this bear market.
We still have to be careful even if Bitcoin shows an increase, because there is still a possibility that the Bitcoin price will drop below the $20k price.
As you said, the whales will not allow the Bitcoin price to recover quickly, because after all whales do get benefits during a bear market. Whales have
a very large capital, so they will still want to buy Bitcoin at a very low price, so the whales will try to get Bitcoin back down to below $20k.
Therefore Bitcoin is not necessarily in the near future able to rise above the price of $ 22k. We still have to monitor the Bitcoin price for at least
the next few days, I still hope the Bitcoin support price is able to keep Bitcoin from falling back below the $20k price. There's not much we can do
in a situation like this other than be patient holding the Bitcoins we have.