Just false. USO didn't "blow up". It's still very much trading and operated as expected.

Blaming retail investors is a very common trope of the financial markets recently. Truth is there just isn't that much retail fire power.

To your point: look at the USO roll schedule on the day the futures went negative you would have noticed that they were basically done 75 percent into the next month in the days before.

So we're now talking about a few 100 million USD exposure in the front month due to uso that needs to be rolled. That can't be the one to blame...

They didn't blow up. Blow up means lose all the money. Afaik, USO weren't trying to roll their whole book that day (the exchange put out a notice a month or so before telling people to roll...as the article says). The Chinese banks were literally attempting to roll the whole fund and investors lost 100% (afaik, they lost more than 100%...the sum I have seen is a loss of 200%+).