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To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here . Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Seems like just yesterday we were ringing in the New Year, but we’ve coasted into February and all seems to be somewhat relaxed (for once) in the crypto world. Last month was filled with crypto companies laying off staff , developments around the existing and new Chapter 11 bankruptcies in the space, partnerships and conversations about potential recovery in 2023. Even with a range of bad news flooding the industry, some cryptocurrencies had a bull run in January, amid the market turmoil. Bitcoin rallied 40% on the month, while ether rose about 32% during the same period. Solana also saw serious recovery, from about $10 in the beginning of the year, near its lowest level since February 2021, up 146% to about $24.3 by the end of January, CoinMarketCap data showed. These market movements could pot

BUD , a nascent app taking a shot at creating a metaverse for Gen Z to play and interact with each other, has raised another round of funding in three months. The Singapore-based startup told TechCrunch that it has closed $36.8 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India, not long after it secured a Series A extension in February . The new infusion brings BUD’s total financing to over $60 million. As with BUD’s previous rounds, this round of raise attracted a handful of prominent China-focused investors — ClearVue Partners, NetEase and Northern Light Venture Capital. Its existing investors GGV Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and Source Code Capital also participated in the round. Founded by two former Snap engineers Risa Feng and Shawn Lin in 2019, BUD lets users create bulbous 3D characters, cutesy virtual assets and richly colored experiences through drag-and-drop and without any coding background. The company declined to reveal its active user size but said its use

The TechCrunch Podcast Network has been nominated for two Webbys in the Best Technology Podcast category. You can help TechCrunch win by voting for Chain Reaction , which digs into the wild world of crypto, or Found , which brings you the stories behind the startups by sitting down with the founders themselves. Please take a few moments to vote here . Voting closes April 20. (NB I host Chain Reaction, so vote for my show!) Welcome back to Chain Reaction. This week was pretty bearable as a crypto reporter covering this space. There was less crazy news transpiring, compared to previous weeks (where we saw a number of U.S. government crackdowns on major crypto companies like Binance and Coinbase ). Still, it’s never a dull week in the crypto world. In late March, Arbitrum, an Ethereum scaling solution, transitioned into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), after airdropping community members its new token, ARB. DAOs are meant to operate with no central authority and token h