“while the new futures contract trading in Chicago showed that traders were expecting the cryptocurrency to be trading at even higher prices in January.”

That’s not what it shows. If futures are trading higher than spot, you could by bitcoins, sell a future in January, and make a guaranteed profit. People doing that would increase spot / decrease future price to the point where the difference covers just the interest on purchase price for 1 month, which is basically zero, + storage costs, which should also be basically zero.