Bitcoin (BTC) has been trading sideways after its big move to the upside but investors are confused once again as to what its next defining move might be. The last time we had consolidation for this long; BTC/USD crashed hard below $6,000 and made a new yearly low. Cryptocurrency investors thus have good reason to be fearful of further decline at this point. That being said when something appears this obvious investors need to be more cautious. It is true that a lot of historical patterns and trends repeat over and over again in the trading history of most financial assets. However, we have to understand why something happened and in what circumstances it happened. For instance, if we talk about consolidation, BTC/USD has consolidated many a time during its market cycles. Does this mean that every time the price consolidates during a bear market, we will see a move to the downside? Not at all especially when BTC/USD is this close to a bottom. The price consolidates when it cannot go up or down because there is a lack of momentum. It is consolidating again but the circumstances are the opposite of what they were back when the price was trading around $6,000. As most of you will remember, the sentiment around $6,000 was still overly bullish. Very few people expected the price to fall to $3,000 or lower levels. This was because $6,000 had been tested time and again and it had held strongly as a market structure. However, when the price fell below $6,000 all hell broke loose and investors had no idea what the floor might be.  That being said, the number of buy orders around $3,000 could be spotted from a mile away and it was clear that investors were hopeful that the price might stop around those levels. Now, why were they so sure the price will find a floor around $3,000? To find an answer to this, let us go back to one of our very old analysis in which we talked about the cost of mining Bitcoin (BTC). Different countries have different costs of mining Bitcoin (BTC). On the higher end we have Korea with a mining cost of around $18,000 per Bitcoin (BTC). However, on the lower end we have China with a mining cost of around $3,200 per Bitcoin (BTC). All the big mining pools for Bitcoin (BTC) are still based in China. It is a fact that most of Bitcoin (BTC) mining still takes place in China despite the numerous bans. So, it makes sense to see why they would want to defend the price against falling below their mining cost. A lot of people expected BTC/USD to stop around $6,000 because that was the average price to mine one Bitcoin (BTC). However, they underestimated the greed in this market. A lot of miners kept on mining even if they were not turning in a profit as long as they were not making a loss. They know their Bitcoins are going to be worth a lot more in the long term so why should they stop mining as long as they are not losing money. The price is currently preparing to rise towards $6,000 to test the previous market structure. There is a high probability that it will face a strong rejection and remain range bound between $3,000 and $6,000 for the rest of the year.