Key Takeaways:
- Gamestop offered $55.5B for Ebay at $125/share, with TD Bank providing $20B in debt financing.
- The bid draws on Gamestop’s $519M bitcoin position, built from 4,710 BTC purchased in fiscal 2025.
- Ryan Cohen plans a proxy fight if Ebay’s board refuses, signaling full commitment to the acquisition.
The Offer
Gamestop submitted an unsolicited, non-binding offer to acquire Ebay for approximately $55.5 billion, $125 per share in a roughly equal split of cash and Gamestop common stock, representing a 20% premium to Ebay’s last Friday close.
Ryan Cohen, who leads Gamestop as CEO, told Ebay’s board he views the platform as capable of becoming a meaningful rival to Amazon. He has also indicated he is prepared to pursue a proxy fight and take the offer directly to shareholders if the board refuses to engage. TD Bank has provided a $20 billion commitment letter to help finance the deal.
Gamestop ended fiscal 2025 with nearly $9 billion in total cash and investments, a war chest built through years of cost-cutting and, more recently, a deliberate pivot into digital assets.
The Bitcoin Connection
The bitcoin angle sits at the center of Gamestop’s modernized balance sheet as the company acquired 4,710 BTC for approximately $500 million during fiscal 2025, with 4,709 of those coins pledged as collateral in a covered-call strategy. The position has since grown to approximately $519 million and forms part of the balance sheet underpinning the Ebay proposal.
The approach mirrors, in spirit if not in scale, the model popularized by Strategy, which holds 818,334 BTC and has used preferred equity issuance and capital markets access to fund aggressive bitcoin accumulation. Gamestop’s variant is distinct in that, rather than accumulating further, the company is leveraging its non-traditional balance sheet to pursue an M&A ambition at a scale that would have seemed implausible three years ago.
Market Reaction
Gamestop shares closed at $26.53 on May 1, up 6.33%, as investors priced in the transformational possibility, while Ebay’s stock surged more than 10% in after-hours trading (as seen above) following the reports. The GME meme coin mirrored the excitement, rising 54% within hours of the news breaking. Ebay’s board has not yet publicly responded to the proposal.