Also, I didn't see any great impact over price last year when the future contract was added to the market. Crypto-currencies are not-so compatible with the regular trading tools and approaches to the market.
You may be right, but I'm sure Bitcoin futures was only hype at some point in the past as well, and here we are now.
To be fair, CBOE launched their Bitcoin futures on December 10, which coincided with the furious December rally. No one knows for sure what spurred that on, but it's very possible that futures was a significant factor.
Either way, the more accessible Bitcoin is for more people, the better. If nothing else, major market players opening exchanges help on that front.
Oh I don't think there is any doubt that the hype around futures is what took Bitcoin from $6k to $20k in 6 weeks. The september crash had just ended by mid-october or so and it had moved up to $6k, then the first futures market was announced and Bitcoin immediately started moving up hard. Futures were THE factor in the end of the year mania phase that brought about the crash back to a bottom of what the price was right when futures were first announced. Of course the reason for the hype is because everyone was saying futures (which don't do anything to directly help the price of bitcoin) was gonna lead to actual bitcoin investment by Wall St firms. Now half a year later we are getting this first piece of news about a Wall St firm planning to actually get into Bitcoin. That will be the start of moving from the early adopter phase to the institutional investor phase. The next Bitcoin boom will be from a flood of Wall St money, of course greased by another flood of FOMO Main St money as well.