So, let's say "What if" they were the reason for the huge spike last year? They know Bitcoin futures could be manipulated and they needed coins to do that. So they started to buy coins before the price increased to a ATH.
I have always believed that if there weren't any future markets going live, we wouldn't be anywhere near the all time high levels of last year. It's impossible to exactly point out what the main reason behind it was, because it could be traders anticipating on institutions entering the Bitcoin space, which is reason enough to cause a massive bull run, or it was indeed an institutional lead high to massively short Bitcoin afterwards. For that reason I am curious to find out what the long-short ratio was at the time of opening.
Is there anyone with log information covering that subject and within that specific time frame? I have tried looking it up but couldn't find anything useful.
In the end these futures might as well be a gimmick for the time being, but the external uses are quite beneficial. Miners for example could just set up a contract with buyers that at whatever point in time the buyer will buy X number of Bitcoins at Y price, which ensures the miner to have a steady income even when the market absolutely tanks. In the non crypto world regular farmers use futures to sell their products at the rates that are worthwhile for them, and I don't see why miners won't be doing this as well.