Yes, each contract has someone on each side. With long-only futures ETFs and so on, large numbers of investors can get exposure to the futures markets, for exam

Yes, each contract has someone on each side. With long-only futures ETFs and so on, large numbers of investors can get exposure to the futures markets, for example in physical commodities markets like petroleum and agricultural products, in the attempt to create diversity in their portfolios, and they usually want to go long, as if they were buying stocks, typically when the trend is up in the first place. Many economists believe that they then can help to exacerbate trends beyond a rational price (think, "bubble"). Hard evidence for this is inconclusive, but I personally tend believe it is quite possible. So, for example, the price of oil may rise because of fundamentals (supply and demand for actual use), but this new source of passive, paper demand (trend-chasing long-only investors) can push the price farther than it could have gone otherwise. For example, $147/barrel West Texas crude oil was clearly impossible to sustain (and may have been the needle which finally made the financial markets go pop), but very possibly froth in the markets had helped pushed it up that far, because everyone wanted to get in on this amazing commodities super-cycle, and of course they wanted to be long. The supply and demand fundamentals were indeed bullish, but not up to $147, or, at the same time in 2007, $18/bushel of soybeans, a price that would imply widespread hunger. Excuse me for going on like this, but it could be interesting to note that the justification for having speculators in futures markets at all is to provide liquidity to the markets and help in price discovery. That means, to me, that participants should go long or short with equal proclivity. Instead, many ETFs encourage stock and bond investors to take long-term, buy-and-hold style positions in the futures markets. There are short commodity ETFs, but they aren't popular like the longs. Therefore this class of speculator introduces too many longs, not enough shorts, often with the effect of distorting market movements, especially during trends. Still, these aren't likely to be issues with bitcoin futures.