Why does it matter? It's not like cash settled futures affect the spot market; there's no arbitrage mechanism. I don't see anything wrong with people speculating on the price. Surely Bakkt's order books will benefit from such speculators when its markets launch.
I see Bitfinex-style margin as more problematic for the market: you can use cash collateral to short the spot market, or BTC collateral to long. This seems much more influential to price than the CBOE or CME markets.
It matters because these legacy cash settled platforms are gaining more dominance within this space. The CME market is no longer a market you can ignore.
Why? What evidence is there that CME has any effect on spot market prices? I certainly don't pay attention to it and I make a living trading BTC.
It has consistently been delivering super high volumes that have gone through the $1 billion mark more than once, and that's just 8 hours worth of trading. In a space that's getting more and more institutionalized it's only going to gain more dominance.
Higher volumes maybe, but what do you mean by "dominance?" Nobody follows the CME because it doesn't have real supply and demand pressures. Anyone who wants to buy or sell real BTC needs to do it on a real spot exchange.
Let's say hypothetically institutions want to use cash to dump the price of BTC. They certainly can't do it on CME because it's tied to an index: other CME traders will simply bring the market back in line with spot prices.
Bitfinex on the other hand isn't that dominant anymore. It has gone backwards after their many fuckups which lead to a massive outflow of capital.
Bitfinex is trading within $10 of the other spot exchanges. That means there is
real arbitrage happening. It doesn't matter if you don't think they are "dominant" anymore. If large traders suppress prices on Bitfinex (for example, by leveraged shorting with USD) then arbitrage traders will flow into Bitfinex to buy up the cheap BTC. This absorbs
real demand and takes from available fiat supply on the spot market.
Unlike CME, this has an actual tangible effect on price.
Not really something I consider worth following. No institution will send a penny to Bitfinex.
Galaxy Digital was one such institutional customer:
https://www.coindesk.com/nyag-bitfinex-tether-served-new-york-residents-longer-than-they-claim I very much doubt they are the only one.