The article is fairly well put together. The author has some good references from actual exchanges reporting fishy behavior, but not much follow up. I tend to be quite skeptical of conspiracies that involve many actors as one like this would (too much coordination, too much chance an agent breaks silence), but it's not totally hair-brained if this isn't "their" first rodeo at price suppression.
One critique I'll make is that the author's point of view is in "real" vs "fake" money, but I suspect if there is a conspiracy it is not because the conspirators feel that way. One way to get participation in a conspiracy like that and reduce the risk of a participant breaking silence is for the conspirators to believe they're doing nothing wrong or something totally normal. "Taming" the asset with futures doesn't have to mean, "I'm a big banker and I'm threatened!", rather it could mean, "Here's a volatile asset that is ripe for me to make shitloads of money by manipulating". And big banks and their trade desk staff understand making shitloads of money from random assets (I got a loooong explanation and story of the junk bond market from a former junk bond trader friend/colleague... wild stuff).
So maybe he's right that there is a conspiracy, but if so I think it's a conspiracy to squeeze money out of the asset rather than anything high minded as is suggested.
I think you are on the mark. First and foremost, the institutions we know and (oh so) love never miss an opportunity to squeeze fees out of retail traders. The futures market is an easy way for retailers to bet on the price movements of the underlying. They don't actually want to own the underlying. I would also add that, by their very nature, paper markets/derivatives of finite and non-consumable assets will suppress the price. If the folks that genesis these things are aware of this is debatable and, if so, would be considered at best a bonus.