CNBC analyst: It could take months for FTX fallout to be fully uncovered

• You could see another company start to struggle a month from now that’s tied to FTX 
• Sometimes there’s a bit of a lag period before everything is uncovered. 

John Todaro, Principal of crypto and blockchain research at Needham & Company, talks about FTX contagion risks to CNBC. 

The anatomy of the fallout, or the domino effect 

Todaro said:

We have to remember that the FTX fallout happened three months after the collapse of other companies. It’s been only 1-2 months since the issues with FTX started, so you could see another company start to struggle a month from now that’s tied to FTX. No one was aware of it. Sometimes there’s a bit of a lag period and it takes a few months for everything to be uncovered.

Most obvious risks 

Genesis was a large lender in the space, so there was a lot of exposure to FTX and to 3AC, which blew up earlier in the year, so these borrowing and lending companies have gotten themselves in a decent bit of trouble. 

On the plus side, that has mostly been contained to them, and a lot of that leverage has been flushed out of the market, but you should certainly be cautious over the next 3 weeks or one month.

Who remains standing, who’s the strongest out there? What is the reputation of the space now?

From an exchange standpoint, we still like Coinbase. It stands alone as the most regulated of cryptocurrency exchanges. They have audited financial statements and are a more solid exchange from a user standpoint than exchanges like Binance. Beyond that, we’re seeing general concern with any centralized exchange. A lot of users pulled assets into the wrong private wallet. This should be considered as users pull assets from exchanges. 

This certainly has left a “black eye” on the space in terms of the general crypto market. We’re still seeing institutional investment appetite in space, but they are now more cautious, conducting significant due diligence in each sector. 

Ending on a positive note 

What we’ve been hearing from investors and seeing in the market is that a lot of the leverage, the actual tokens, has come out of the market now, which is a good indication.