KuCoin Pay and 2Game Digital are pushing crypto deeper into gaming. The two companies have joined forces to bring crypto payments and blockchain-powered rewards to global gaming communities — starting with an exclusive promotion on August 29, 2025, offering gamers discounts, bundles, and early access to the 2Game Token ICO.

Key Takeaways

• KuCoin Pay integrates into 2Game Digital’s ecommerce, esports, and loyalty platforms.

• 2Game Token will power rewards, gated perks, and competitive features.

• Launch promotions kick off August 29 with 20% discounts and ICO early access.

• 2Game’s esports and play-to-earn ecosystem gains crypto integration.

• GCL Global Holdings is targeting Asia as a hub for Web3 gaming growth.

A New Era for Web3 Gaming Commerce

KuCoin, one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges, is pushing Web3 deeper into gaming through its payment arm, KuCoin Pay. Its new partnership with 2Game Digital, part of GCL Global Holdings (Nasdaq: GCL), allows millions of players to pay with cryptocurrency across 2Game’s ecosystem — from its global ecommerce store to its esports division and loyalty-driven 2Game Pro platform.

KuCoin Pay supports over 50 cryptocurrencies, including KCS, USDT, USDC, and BTC, allowing for fast, borderless, and secure transactions.

Kumiko Ho, Head of Payment Business at KuCoin, said:

“This partnership with 2Game Digital is another milestone in our mission to make cryptocurrency a frictionless part of everyday life.”

The 2Game Token and Community Engagement

2Game is also preparing to introduce its 2Game Token, which is intended to support loyalty programs, unlock gated rewards, and enable competitive features across its ecosystem. The company aims to become one of the first gaming platforms to combine ecommerce, esports, and play-to-earn mechanics under a unified Web3 infrastructure.

Sebastian Toke, Group CEO of GCL, added:

“This partnership not only opens the door to a new era of secure, instant, and seamless transactions, it also allows us to tap into a thriving global crypto community.”

Launch Promotions Begin August 29

To make the partnership immediately tangible, KuCoin Pay and 2Game Digital are rolling out a series of promotions from August 29, 2025.

Gamers who pay with KuCoin Pay here will unlock:

• 20% discounts on select purchases

• Special pricing on new releases

• Biweekly limited-time bundles

• Early whitelist access to the 2Game Token ICO

The promotion is intended to help onboard gamers into the ecosystem while offering added incentives for early participation.

Strategic Impact on the Gaming and Web3 Sectors

GCL is strategically focused on the growing Asian gaming market, where Web3 adoption in esports and digital commerce is accelerating. Through KuCoin Pay, 2Game Digital hopes to offer an accessible on-ramp for gamers to explore blockchain-based commerce.

For KuCoin, the move aligns with its broader effort to normalize crypto transactions in mainstream industries. For 2Game Digital, it represents an attempt to explore how blockchain can enhance user interaction, loyalty, and commerce — without altering core gaming experiences.

What you need to know

• Adobe Firefly integrates Gemini’s Flash 2.5 Image for enhanced AI content creation capabilities
• Users gain the flexibility to switch between Adobe apps seamlessly during their creative process.
• Premium members get unlimited access to Gemini’s features until September 1st, while free tier folks get up to 20 free media generations.

Adobe Firefly is pushing to make content creation seamless by bringing in Gemini’s latest model to the playing field. In a press release, the platform announced that with this addition, “people have even greater flexibility to explore their ideas with industry-leading generative AI models and create stunning content with ease.”

In June, Adobe’s Firefly landed on Android, bringing Gemini’s latest Imagen 4 and Veo 3, and now it is adding Gemini’s Flash 2.5 Image to help with AI content generation.

According to Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s Vice President of New GenAI Business Ventures, this integration, combined with Adobe’s existing Creative Cloud apps, provides a comprehensive creative process from start to finish.

“Only Adobe delivers a complete creative workflow that takes ideas from inspiration to impact – empowering everyone with the freedom to experiment, the confidence to perfect every detail, and the control to make their work stand out. We invite everyone to try it out today,” Elsakr added.

Adobe states that despite having AI partner models like Google, OpenAI, and Black Forest Labs integrated into its platforms, it continues to work on expanding its FireFly AI models. This gives users a variety of AI generation tools to pick from within a single workflow.

“We’re delivering the flexibility to use the right model for the job, without bouncing between workflows or platforms,” the press release stated. What’s more, users can even switch between different Adobe apps Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere, to refine or edit their content while working on FireFly.

For instance, social media content creators can use the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image in Firefly to create multiple graphics for keeping the design consistent across posts and then move these designs into Adobe Express to easily animate, resize, or generate captions. Additionally, Visual Designers can create prototype product concepts or character designs in Firefly, explore multiple directions, and then move them into Photoshop or Illustrator for fine-tuned edits, Adobe adds.

Lastly, Adobe says that all the content created on its platform and across other AI models will not be used to train generative AI models, including the new Gemini 2.5 Flash integration, keeping things secure for the user.

Starting today, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image will be available in Firefly’s Text to Image module and Firefly Boards (beta), and Adobe Express. And Adobe is giving its Premium tier members access to unlimited generations with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, until Sept.1, while those on Firefly and Express free plans have access to only 20 generations at no cost.

Jack Dorsey’s technology company Block joined the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) index on Wednesday, marking the third public company with Bitcoin holdings to join the global benchmark.

Block holds 8,584 Bitcoin (BTC) worth approximately $1 billion, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET. That stash makes Block the 13th-largest corporate holder of BTC.

The company’s shares on the NYSE exchange have jumped nearly 14% over the past five days since the company announced it would join the S&P 500.

The S&P 500 tracks 500 of the largest publicly listed US companies. Among the other index companies exposed to BTC are Tesla and Coinbase.

To be listed in the S&P 500, a company must have a market cap greater than $18 billion, a public float (a portion of the company’s outstanding shares that are available for trading) greater than 10%, and the most recent quarter’s earnings must be positive.

S&P 500 inclusions lead to more BTC exposure

The S&P 500 index accounted for $50 trillion in market capitalization as of the end of first quarter of 2025. By buying into an exchange-traded fund or other instrument that tracks the S&P 500, investors gain exposure to a wide variety of industries, including, now, crypto.

In a Wednesday X post, OnlyCalls wrote, “Institutional entrance solidifies BTC’s financial visibility. Expect more conservative entities to consider BTC as a viable treasury asset.”

Block is replacing Hess Corp, a US energy company that is dropping out after its $55 billion merger with energy conglomerate Chevron.

Related: Strategy launches Bitcoin stock pegged at $100 to increase treasury

Coinbase, Tesla stock performances

The other two companies with significant Bitcoin holdings that have landed in the S&P 500 are Coinbase and Tesla. Coinbase holds 9,267 BTC worth about $1.1 billion at time of publication. Tesla holds 11,509 BTC worth $1.4 billion.

Coinbase’s share price has risen 28.4% over the past month, according to Google Finance. That’s a steeper rise than the overall crypto market, which has jumped 23% in the past 30 days, according to CoinGecko.

Tesla’s share price has fallen 4.6% in the past month, though it may be linked less to the crypto market and more to its fundamentals and operations.

Magazine: Bitcoin OG Willy Woo has sold most of his Bitcoin — Here’s why 

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The two companies also set up a new business, Music IP Holdings Inc., which will handle the licensing of these patents and related technologies.

UMG has been developing AI tools since 2020 to support artist promotion, data analysis, and distribution. This latest step is meant to speed up the process of filing and licensing patents while freeing up UMG’s teams to focus on developing products.

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So far, UMG has filed 15 patent applications through Liquidax. The patents cover a range of areas including tools for protecting against AI misuse, systems that allow artists to create music collaboratively with AI, software for running marketing campaigns, audio-based health tools, and better ways to manage music rights and royalties.

Music IP Holdings will streamline the licensing process for these inventions worldwide by centralizing it under one entity.

Chris Horton, UMG’s Senior Vice President for Strategic Technology, explained that the company is committed to driving innovation and building on its long history of research, development, and successful patents.

Daniel Drolet, founder of Liquidax and partner in Music IP Holdings, added:

We are laser focused on advancing UMG’s leadership and their cutting-edge technologies, especially AI, to empower their artists, protect creative rights, foster partnerships, and enhance UMG’s fan experiences worldwide.

Recently, Grammarly, a grammar checking platform, acquired the artificial intelligence (AI) email app Superhuman. What is the goal of the acquisition? Read the full story.

The decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK) defied the overall crypto market dip and witnessed a mild bump in price after Chainlink Labs announced that it had joined the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Crypto Task Force.

The project announced on the social media platform X that it had joined the task force to “discuss the need for standards enabling the compliant issuance and trading of tokenized assets at scale.”

“For the blockchain industry to reach its full potential and tap institutional capital, meeting regulatory requirements is essential. Only Chainlink provides the compliance, privacy, cross-chain, and data infrastructure needed to scale digital asset adoption in a single platform.

Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) enables developers and institutions to define and enforce compliance policies directly within smart contract workflows, providing a framework for tokenized assets to remain compliant with regulatory requirements as they move across the on-chain economy.”

LINK is trading at $17.49 at time of writing. The 17th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up nearly 3% in the past 24 hours, more than 12% in the past seven days and more than 33% in the past month.

By comparison, the overall crypto market is down 3.6% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko.

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Pakistan Minister of State for Crypto and Blockchain Bilal Bin Saqib is likely looking to collaborate with Wall Street.

A June 6 X post by the Pakistan Crypto Council shows that Saqib met with Brandon Lutnick, the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a global financial services firm. A separate video included in a separate post shows that he also met with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who recently said he will ensure a Bitcoin bond is launched in the city. The post reads:

“New York is Lahore.”

The meeting with Lutnick follows his firm’s recently increased interest in crypto. The two reportedly discussed “tokenization, Bitcoin mining, Pakistan’s Web3 future and avenues of collaboration.”

Cantor Fitzgerald is a global financial powerhouse founded in 1945 with headquarters in New York, focused on investment banking, fixed income, equities, real estate, SPACs and financial technology. The firm’s website notes that its investment arm manages about $14.8 billion in assets.

Related: Pakistan’s crypto envoy courts Wall Street allies

Wall Street giant Cantor deepens crypto ties

The report followed news from late April that Brandon Lutnick was reportedly partnering with SoftBank, Tether and Bitfinex to create a $3 billion crypto acquisition company. In late 2024, the firm was also reported to own a 5% stake in stablecoin issuer Tether.

More recently, Cantor Fitzgerald has also partnered with Anchorage Digital and Copper, relying on them as its Bitcoin custodians and collateral managers as it launches its new digital asset financing business, targeting institutional investors.

Related: Trump-backed World Liberty Financial partners with Pakistan Crypto Council

Pakistan’s crypto friendship with the US

The announcements follow Saqib’s meeting with Robert “Bo” Hines, executive director of US President Donald Trump’s Council on Digital Assets, during a visit to the White House earlier this week. The meeting focused on cryptocurrency initiative cooperation between Pakistan and the US, including potential partnerships and future decentralized finance initiatives.

In late May, Saqib also revealed that Pakistan is moving to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. This marked a shift in the country’s stance that crypto would never be legal.

Saqib was appointed by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in late May as his special assistant on blockchain and crypto. That announcement came shortly after Pakistan allocated 2,000 megawatts of surplus electricity exclusively for Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence centers.

Magazine: US risks being ‘front run’ on Bitcoin reserve by other nations: Samson Mow

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