I answered and will answer again. Futures are leveragable, the underlying is not (unless you borrow fiat at high interest, which rex the trade). Therefore, directional traders leverage up many multiples on futures, while arb traders have no leverage to apply because the underlying cannot be bought without high interest fiat loans.
Therefore, each directional trader can use up to 100 X the leverage of each arb trader. Directional traders are simply swamping arb traders with far greater order flow. Moreover, the crypto markets are relatively immature and most traders seek directional rapid returns because they don't understand R/R.
Also, futures do not persistently trade with an upward term structure. They do so when BTC is or has been uptrending strongly. Sometimes they are fairly flat, and occassionally they diverge downward for weeks at a time. That would point more to a price action explanation rather than an underlying trust issue.
Your theory (if I get it right) is that futures term structure is in major contango because of lack of trust in the exchange. Further, that term structure is fairly tightly and consistently matched in the CME futures because there is no way to properly arb on those markets. Your theory would be correct if CME futures showed a disconnect when the crypto exchanges term structures altered significantly. I don't know if this has happened or not, but your theory has more moving parts, imo, than mine. I've also traded these markets a lot and seen the moves and worked as a professional crypto analyst, so I do trust my analysis, though I'm not absolutely certain of the underlying causality. Maybe 70% likely.
In terms of crypto problems, my greater concern is that the markets are manipulated, sometimes heavily. I'm more troubled by the flash crashes than the hacks. I see them as kind of a red herring.
