He actually didn't. The majority of that was in options. So he "controlled" 5% via derivatives but this is not the same as owning shares.

Why didn't Cohen buy 100% of eBay shares. What is he, stupid?

I thought their stockholders were super into direct registration to trigger the "mother of all short squeezes" when (or so the conspiracy went anyway) all the evil hedge funds would have to buy back their alleged naked shorts for infinite money. That doesn't really play well with Gamestop putting 1.5 billion extra shares on the market, which is basically exactly the reverse of a short squeeze and would surely push down prices.

Or was this a 2022 thing and Gamestop investors have moved on from diamond handing?

Cocaine (or whatever their CEO is on) doesn't buy itself.

Edit: Also, the fact that company leadership can get away with this kind of thing, fleecing retail investors for millions/billions of dollars, and face no consequences is...I dunno. I guess it's just normal now. Lawlessness, bribery, favors to the right politicians, lying without hesitation or remorse. People in media clutching their pearls over whatever the Gen Z kids are getting up to on TikTok while this shit is going on is just the icing on the cake.

Thats not my point. Shinning a light on what eBay could be vs what it is.

They're doing a terrible job of preventing scams. Right now there are hundreds of listings for GPUs at too-good-to-be-true prices from sellers with 0 feedback or, worse, from old accounts with positive feedback that have obviously been taken over by scammers (all the feedback is from years ago and about unrelated products). Trust is what eBay brings to the table, when they cede that to scammers, they stop being useful...I can get scammed on TikTok any time I want.

I would admit that when I had first heard the news (from hackernews) and read its comments, people gave multiple examples and convuluted examples on how this all makes sense and the financial aspects. I was left feeling impressed that perhaps gamestop might've been thinking something new.

Then I watched the video.

> I would trust that guy to make a sandwich.

Don't worry, we are just trusting him with around a measly 11 billion dollars.

This isn't even the worst part by the way, somehow the worst part to me feels like there are people who watched that interview and then somehow got even more convinced within this person/gamestop and publicly glaze him.

To them, I have a question like, are we watching the same interview? How can anyone watch that interview and then consider it in any way positively or anything like that, like huh, have we watched the same interview?

Perhaps some of us at first (like within that HN discussion) were/are trying to justify as if it is some massive brain effort by gamestop or anything and its a 5d chess move ,but to me, this interview showed me what the reality is actually.