One reason why bitcoin is struggling to move up is the bitcoin futures market. The futures market opened Dec 18, literally the peak of bitcoin. Looking at the COT data, we can see that bitcoin has always been in a negative net position. Which means there has always been more short positions than long postions. Below is the data collected since April which shows a bearish bias.
Now, these aren't massive positions but the one thing to notice is the consistency of the positions. There hasn't been a large increase or decrease, which mirrors bitcoin of late as it has been very steady without much volatility. Considering there haven't been massive amounts of shorts added, my feeling is that bitcoin will start to move back up towards 25k. But I wouldn't start buying until I see a positive net or large amounts of longs being added.