'Big Short' Investor Michael Burry Exits GameStop After eBay Bid

In brief

• Michael Burry sold his entire GameStop position Monday after the company’s $55.5B eBay bid.
• He flagged debt levels incompatible with his "Instant Berkshire" thesis from January.
• The exit implies GME's long-running status as a speculative bet, Decrypt was told. Michael Burry sold his entire GameStop position Monday following the company's $55.5 billion eBay bid, which he said would saddle the firm with debt his bullish thesis could not absorb. The "Big Short" investor disclosed the sale Monday on his Substack, citing debt levels he said were incompatible with the "Instant Berkshire" thesis he had bought into in January. Burry claimed the deal would likely push GameStop's borrowings past the limits any disciplined buyer would accept. "The Instant Berkshire thesis was never compatible with >5x Debt/EBITDA, never ok with interest coverage under 4.0x," Burry wrote, adding that GME was his “first sale” since starting on the Substack platform.

GameStop Makes Its Play $56 Billion for eBay, Makes Perfect Sense $GME $EBAY pic.twitter.com/sCs7XLsNJJ

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) May 4, 2026 Burry's move comes as GameStop pursues an unsolicited, non-binding $55.5 billion offer to acquire eBay at $125 per share in a roughly even split of cash and stock. The bid draws on $9.4 billion in cash on hand alongside a $20 billion debt commitment from TD Securities. GameStop's pivot from meme stock icon to corporate acquirer ran through Cohen's reinvention of the balance sheet, capped by a May 2025 purchase of 4,710 BTC for roughly $500 million. The firm later pledged 4,709 of those coins to Coinbase as collateral for an over-the-counter covered-call strategy, leaving the position recorded as a receivable instead of as a directly held asset. Earlier in February, Cohen an unspecified acquisition plan as "way more compelling than Bitcoin" and declined to rule out liquidating the stash to fund a deal. The position is worth about $368 million, per the company’s Q4 , making it less than 1% of the eBay bid. The stash’s role in funding the deal remains unclear. Still, Burry maintained he "supports the effort" behind Cohen's plan to dominate collectibles and resale, conceding that "this play for eBay makes perfect sense" in the eyes of financial markets that reward scale. His skepticism, meanwhile, was on the financing aspects. The capital markets approach "could not be more pedestrian,” Burry wrote, describing the path as "well-worn ruts on the road to capitalist Hell" and arguing Cohen should have pursued Wayfair, with its "70% of its own last mile deliveries and warehouses all over," as the more logical Amazon competitor. Burry’s exit comes off as “a cold reminder that the eBay deal is a debt-driven disaster rather than a visionary move,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told *Decrypt*. “While Cohen talks of market synergy, Burry sees only reckless leverage and has chosen to walk away,” Yoon said. “In truth, GME has always been more of a gamble than a traditional investment, and this fallout simply confirms that reality once and for all.” eBay's board confirmed receipt of the unsolicited proposal Monday and said it would "carefully review and consider" the offer, flagging both the value of the GameStop stock consideration and the firm's ability to deliver a binding deal. eBay shares are at $105.37, well below the $125 offer, while GameStop is on the day, at $24.14, according to Google Finance data.