Epstein Files Flop, State of the Market, Autonomous Robots, Trump's Gold Card, Friedberg on Jeopardy

The prediction window is “the next couple of years” from March 2025, i.e., roughly until March 2027. As of the current date (Nov 30, 2025), that window has not expired, so we can’t yet definitively say whether Chamath’s claim will ultimately be right or wrong.

Current evidence suggests his skepticism is plausible so far:

• Figure AI is only beginning “alpha testing” of its humanoid robot in homes in 2025; reporting emphasizes that home use will remain in very early stages through 2025, and that we should not expect these robots to be routinely vacuuming or cooking yet. (techcrunch.com)
• Tesla’s Optimus has demo videos showing it autonomously performing various household chores (taking out trash, sweeping, vacuuming, stirring a pot, operating a microwave, opening cabinets, closing curtains), but these are still controlled demos, not a widely deployed, commercially available general‑purpose home robot. (teslanorth.com)
• 1X’s NEO humanoid home robot is available for preorder for 2026 delivery, marketed as a home helper, but as of October 2025, most tasks are still teleoperated by remote human operators, and autonomy is limited; it’s early‑adopter hardware rather than a robust, broadly capable, fully autonomous household servant. (en.wikipedia.org)

So, as of late 2025, general‑purpose humanoid robots are not yet “super functional” for common household tasks in a broad, reliable, consumer sense, which is consistent with Chamath’s view. However, because his prediction explicitly covers the entire period up to ~March 2027, it is too early to judge its final accuracy.

Given that the time frame is still ongoing and no contradiction has yet occurred, the correct status is “inconclusive (too early)”, not definitively right or wrong.

Chamath’s on‑air comment was that over the next six months the U.S. would have to refinance roughly $10T of debt and that, in that window, the 10‑year Treasury yield “maybe [could] even get under 4% if we get a good string of data.”(lilys.ai)

Evaluating this as a time‑and‑level call (“10‑year < 4% within six months of early March 2025”):

• The relevant window is roughly 1 March 2025 to 1 September 2025.
• Multiple market reports show that the 10‑year Treasury yield fell below 4% in early April 2025, well within that six‑month period:
  • On 4 April 2025, the 10‑year yield slipped below 4%, with one report citing a move to about 3.98%, noting it was the first break of the 4% level in roughly half a year.(theglobaltreasurer.com)
  • On 5 April 2025, coverage described the 10‑year yield dropping further, to around 3.89%, clearly under the 4% threshold.(ainvest.com)
  • A separate summary table of yields likewise records the 10‑year at roughly 3.94% on April 4, 2025, reinforcing that sub‑4% prints occurred on those dates.(msmtimes.com)
• Monthly constant‑maturity data based on Federal Reserve series show the April 2025 monthly average for the 10‑year closer to 4.28%, indicating the drop below 4% was brief rather than a new regime, but it did happen during the specified timeframe.(value-trades.com)
• Independent analyses of the 2025 “maturity wall” in U.S. marketable Treasury debt describe multi‑trillion‑dollar refinancing needs in 2025, on the order of high single‑digit trillions for the year, so Chamath’s “about $10T in the next six months” is an aggressive but directionally consistent shorthand for the scale of rollover facing the Treasury.(reddit.com)

The reason yields dipped (flight to safety amid tariff‑driven growth fears, not a benign “good string of data”) diverges from his implied mechanism, but the core empirical claim — that the 10‑year could fall below 4% within six months of the episode — did in fact occur. Hence this prediction is best classified as right.

As of November 30, 2025, it is far too early to know whether Stripe’s main business will be managing roughly $300B of stablecoin float and earning $10–20B per year by around 2030. The timeline of the prediction is ~5 years after the March 2025 episode, so the target date (~2030) has not yet arrived. In the meantime, Stripe has launched stablecoin-based financial accounts in over 100 countries and supports USDC and its own USDB stablecoin, and has processed on the order of $100M in USDC transfers—far below a $300B float. (cointelegraph.com) The entire stablecoin market only recently surpassed about $300B in total supply across all issuers, further underscoring that there is still significant runway before we could evaluate whether Stripe alone reaches that scale. (axios.com) Because the forecast horizon has not elapsed and current data neither confirms nor definitively rules out the scenario, the prediction must be judged as inconclusive for now.

Trump’s $5 million “gold card” / investor-visa idea was formally announced on February 25, 2025, with broad press coverage describing it as a proposed replacement for EB‑5 and pricing residency at $5 million.(reuters.com) Over the following months, reporting focused on design details, quiet trials, and legal doubts—immigration lawyers repeatedly stressed that the program lacked clear legal authority and implementation rules, and some advisors even stated that no cards had actually been sold yet or that the initiative was still only at a waitlist / conceptual stage.(thedailybeast.com) In September 2025 Trump signed an executive order creating a revised Gold Card framework at lower $1–2 million “gift” levels, with a 90‑day setup window and applications still not open as of fall 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

Across startup/VC, tech, and immigration coverage, there are no public reports of any non‑U.S. startup founder selling at least $5 million of secondary equity in a funding round specifically to finance purchase of a Trump Gold Card/visa, nor any anecdote of that type becoming a known case. Articles that mention founders and the Gold Card only describe them as a potential beneficiary class or hypothetical users, not as people who have actually done such a secondary sale to buy one.(economictimes.indiatimes.com) Given (1) the program’s delayed and still‑uncertain rollout, and (2) the absence of any documented case “you are going to hear about” within a few months of the announcement—or even by November 30, 2025—the prediction that such founder secondaries would publicly materialize in that timeframe has not come true.

The forecast horizon (“by the end of 2025”) has not finished yet, and available reporting only covers developments through late November 2025.

What we do know so far:

• Early in 2025, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly claimed that 1,000 Gold Cards had been sold in a single day, but fact‑checks and later reporting emphasized that there was no evidence any visas had actually been issued or even could be, because the legal and administrative framework was not in place.(snopes.com)
• As of early May 2025, VisaVerge reported that “not a single Gold Card has been sold or issued,” despite Lutnick’s public remarks.(visaverge.com)
• When Trump cut the price from $5M to $1M and signed the Gold Card executive order in September 2025, mainstream coverage (e.g., CNBC and CBS) still described the program as being in an “implementation phase,” with no way for applicants to actually apply yet and no cards issued.(cnbc.com)
• By mid–November 2025, immigration law firms and consultancies (Fragomen; Colombo & Hurd; NPZ Law Group; VisaVerge) report that:
  • The draft USCIS petition form (I‑140G) has only just been sent to OMB for review.
  • Agencies are racing to meet a December 18, 2025 implementation deadline.
  • The Gold Card program is still not open for applications yet; key details and the Commerce application step are pending.(fragomen.com)

This strongly implies that, as of late November 2025, zero Trump Gold Cards have actually been sold/issued, and even optimistic prediction markets expect at most a handful of sales in 2025.(visaverge.com) However, because:

• The program’s formal launch is targeted for December 18, 2025, which is after the latest detailed public reports, and
• We do not yet have data on how many, if any, Gold Cards will actually be approved and issued between that launch date and December 31, 2025,

we cannot conclusively state the final 2025 total. Jason’s >5,000‑sold prediction therefore cannot yet be judged definitively right or wrong based on the information currently available.

Hence the outcome is “inconclusive (too early)”, even though existing evidence and market expectations point toward the final number likely being far below 5,000.

As of November 30, 2025, Trump’s “gold card” / Gold Card visa concept is still in flux and has not been operating long enough to know its total lifetime demand. Trump initially announced a $5 million “gold card” investor visa in February 2025, talking about selling up to a million cards, but for months there was no formal application process or clear legal authority, and immigration-law analyses emphasized that the program effectively did not yet exist in U.S. immigration law. (reuters.com) In September 2025, he signed an executive order launching a Trump Gold Card priced at $1 million (or $2 million via corporate sponsorship), while moving the $5 million level to a separate “Platinum Card” product that is not yet operational and would require congressional changes to immigration and tax law. (forbes.com) Various reports mention tens of thousands of people registering interest and administration claims that 1,000 gold cards were “sold” in a day, but investigative coverage and practitioner briefings note that, through at least mid‑2025, there was no functioning application channel, no way to pay, and thus no verified issuance of actual cards. (visaverge.com) Industry experts widely doubt the administration’s projection of a million buyers and instead project demand in the low thousands or even under 1,000 total cards, but these are forward‑looking opinions rather than observed outcomes. (uscis.techmis.com) Because the program’s design, price point, and legal status are still unsettled, and there is no reliable data yet on actual long‑term uptake, Friedberg’s prediction that total lifetime demand will be capped around 10,000 buyers and never reach one million cannot be confirmed or disproven at this time.

The prediction is about the number of buyers in the first full year after the program actually launches.

Timeline and status:

• Trump announced the idea of a $5M “gold card” / investor green card replacement for EB‑5 in late February 2025, with further promotion and a physical card shown to reporters in early April 2025. (investing.com)
• Reporting through mid‑2025 (e.g., Washington Post, Henley & Partners) notes that the program faced serious legal obstacles, that no new visa category had been created by Congress, and that any claims of cards already being “sold” were not backed by official statistics and treated skeptically. (washingtonpost.com)
• On September 19, 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of Commerce to establish the Gold Card program, but this order still left implementation details to agencies. (whitehouse.gov)
• As of November 21, 2025, an immigration law update based on USCIS materials says that applications are not yet being accepted, with agencies only previewing forms and rules and targeting a future launch (described as a December start), and it provides only an internal estimate of roughly 1,000 applicants per year going forward. (greencardmaker.com)

Crucially, there is still no transparent, official data on how many Gold Cards have actually been purchased or issued, and the program’s first operational year has either not begun or is only just beginning as of late November 2025. That means we cannot yet observe the realized number of “buyers in the first year after launch,” nor can we reliably infer it from public sources.

Because the relevant one‑year period has not elapsed and no authoritative issuance statistics are available, whether the eventual buyer count will fall in the 1,000–2,500 range is too early to determine.

As of November 30, 2025, Trump’s $5M “gold card”/“Trump Card” visa has only been proposed and partially rolled out for expressions of interest; its ultimate lifetime take‑up is unknown.

Key facts:

• President Trump announced the $5M “gold card” (later branded the Trump Card) in late February 2025 as a replacement for the EB‑5 investor visa, pitching it as a premium path to U.S. residency and citizenship for the ultra‑wealthy.(reuters.com)
• A government-backed website (trumpcard.gov) went live in June 2025; officials and press reports say around 70,000 people have registered interest via this site, but this is a mailing list, not approved visas.(popularmigrant.com)
• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has claimed that roughly 1,000 cards were sold in a single day and that more than 1,000 cards have already been sold, but these numbers come from political statements rather than audited statistics, and no detailed issuance data has been published.(nypost.com)
• Immigration lawyers and policy experts warn that the program, as designed, likely lacks a clear legal basis without new legislation; they advise clients that the Gold Card is not yet a reliable, legally available path to residency, and note that the current website is only a registration-of-interest form.(thedailybeast.com)
• Independent advisers and industry experts are skeptical about scale: some estimate demand on the order of ~2,000 cards per year, while others predict fewer than 1,000 cards will ever be sold, far below the 2,000,000 figure Chamath floated. These, however, are projections, not final outcomes.(cnbc.com)

Chamath’s prediction was that, if the product effectively allowed gray or semi‑sanctioned money to be regularized (via de‑facto KYC/AML/OFAC workarounds), global demand could reach on the order of 2,000,000 buyers over the life of the program. So far:

• There is no clear evidence that the final or de facto rules provide such a clean workaround to sanctions/AML controls; details are still murky and under legal scrutiny.(euronews.com)
• The program is less than a year old, with uncertain legal status and contested implementation. Even if expert skepticism proves correct, we have not yet observed the full "life of the program," nor a definitive legal shutdown that would make 2,000,000 buyers impossible.

Because the program is new, legally unsettled, and its long‑run duration and rules are unknown, it is too early to know whether cumulative global demand will ever approach ~2,000,000 buyers. The available evidence (modest early interest, legal doubts, and expert skepticism) suggests the prediction is optimistic, but it does not conclusively falsify a multi‑decade "over the life of the program" forecast. Hence the outcome is inconclusive rather than clearly right or wrong at this time.

As of November 30, 2025, there is no definitive, audited data on how many Trump “Gold Card” (or successor) visas have actually been sold, and the ultimate life-of-program total is unknown.

Key points:

• Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick initially pitched a $5 million “gold card” (later rebranded in various ways) and publicly floated selling up to 1–10 million of them, generating trillions in revenue.(cnbc.com) Lutnick even claimed on the All-In Podcast and to international media that he had sold 1,000 cards in a single day.(business-standard.com)
• Subsequent reporting, however, found that for months there was no functioning program and no money changing hands: as of late April 2025, immigration-focused outlets citing the New York Times reported there was still no official application process and that none of Lutnick’s claimed Gold Cards had actually been sold.(visaverge.com)
• When the program finally launched via executive order in September 2025, the core offer was sharply revised: the main “Gold Card” price was cut from $5 million to $1 million, with separate higher-tier products (e.g., a $5 million “Platinum Card”) teased on the trumpcard.gov site. This 80% price cut was widely interpreted by investment‑migration experts as an admission of weak demand.(forbes.com)
• Official communications now talk about making roughly 80,000 Gold Cards available, but even that is a planning figure; the program is still in an early “implementation phase,” and public reporting does not provide a verified count of cards actually issued.(cbsnews.com)
• Independent experts in the investment‑migration space have publicly argued that in practice fewer than 1,000 cards are likely ever to be sold, far below both Trump’s millions and even the “tens of thousands” scale, but these are forecasts, not realized outcomes.(newsweek.com)

Because:

1. The program is only months into actual operation; courts and Congress may still alter, block, or repeal it, and
2. There is no authoritative, end‑state number of buyers, only projections and partial early data,

Chamath’s conditional, long‑horizon prediction about eventual total buyers over the life of the program ("tens of thousands, not millions" if OFAC/AML/KYC rules truly bind) cannot yet be scored as right or wrong. The best we can say is that emerging expert opinion and early signs of weak demand point toward far fewer buyers than the administration’s "millions" rhetoric—but whether the final total lands in the low thousands, tens of thousands, or somewhere else entirely remains unresolved.

As of November 30, 2025, the full conditional scenario Friedberg described has not clearly played out, and there is no explicit time horizon in his prediction.

Precondition – broader retail access: In 2025 the SEC did take meaningful steps toward expanding ordinary investors’ access to private markets. Most notably, it stopped enforcing a staff policy that had capped registered closed‑end funds’ investments in private funds at 15% unless sales were limited to accredited investors with a $25,000 minimum. This change now allows such funds to invest more heavily in private funds (including private‑equity and venture strategies) while being sold to non‑accredited retail investors, effectively broadening indirect retail access to private markets.

• SEC staff and industry commentary describe this as providing greater access for non‑accredited investors to private equity and private credit through retail closed‑end funds and related vehicles. (wssllp.com)

However, this is primarily fund‑mediated access to diversified private funds, not unfettered direct investing by non‑accredited individuals into individual private startup equities at large scale. So even the precondition (“can broadly invest in private startup equity”) is only partially met, and only recently.

Downstream effects (losses and backlash): I find no evidence of a major, widely reported wave of non‑accredited retail investors losing “substantial” amounts of money specifically because of this new access regime to private startup/PE style equity. Commentary and SEC advisory work emphasize potential risks and the need for safeguards, not an already‑materialized retail wipe‑out. (barrons.com)

Elizabeth Warren’s response: Senator Elizabeth Warren has continued her long‑standing criticism of private equity and private markets – e.g., letters and legislation targeting private‑equity buyouts (Walgreens/Sycamore), the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, and concerns about private equity and private credit in retirement accounts. (warren.senate.gov) But these positions predate and are not clearly a new political backlash tied to a fresh wave of losses by newly empowered non‑accredited startup investors, nor have they yet resulted in enacted rules that specifically roll back the 2025 retail‑access expansions.

Given:

• the enabling policy changes are relatively recent and only partially match the “broad” direct startup‑equity access condition;
• there is no documented large‑scale loss event among that new investor cohort; and
• Warren’s ongoing push for stricter private‑equity regulation is part of a long‑running agenda rather than a clearly new, loss‑triggered backlash to these 2025 access changes,

there isn’t enough evidence yet to say that Friedberg’s full causal chain has either definitively occurred or definitively failed. It remains too early to judge, so the prediction is best classified as inconclusive.

As of November 30, 2025, there have been no new SEC final rules or federal statutes materially changing the core U.S. “accredited investor” definition since the SEC’s 2020 amendments; the Commission’s own rulemaking page still points to the 2020 adopting release as the operative definition and shows no later accredited‑investor final rule. (sec.gov)

In Congress, major proposals to broaden access—such as the Equal Opportunity for All Investors Act of 2025 (H.R. 3339) and the Accredited Investor Definition Review Act (H.R. 3348)—have advanced (H.R. 3339 has passed the House and been referred to the Senate; H.R. 3348 has been reported out of committee but not voted on), yet neither has become law, so they have not actually changed who qualifies as accredited. (congress.gov)

The most concrete post‑podcast development is SEC staff guidance ADI 2025‑16, which stops staff from insisting that certain registered closed‑end funds of private funds (CE‑FOPFs) be sold only to accredited investors with a $25,000 minimum and no more than 15% in private funds; this effectively allows more retail investors to access private funds via registered vehicles. However, the ADI itself stresses that it is staff guidance, not a Commission rule or regulation, and does not alter applicable law. (sec.gov)

So far, the formal accredited‑investor framework and most related securities rules remain largely as they were, with only incremental loosening via staff practice and no enacted statutory or rule‑level overhaul. At the same time, the prediction was explicitly about what would happen “over the coming years,” and we are less than a year past the March 1, 2025 podcast date; substantial legislative or regulatory changes could still occur. Given this multi‑year horizon and the absence of decisive evidence either of sweeping reform or of its long‑term absence, the prediction’s ultimate accuracy cannot yet be determined, hence the “inconclusive” rating.

As of November 30, 2025, there is no evidence that the U.S. government has already sold about 75% of its unused or underutilized office real-estate footprint, nor even clear, comprehensive data on what share of that excess space has been or will be disposed of. GAO still lists federal real property management as a long‑standing “high‑risk” area, emphasizing persistent underutilization and the continued difficulty of disposing of unneeded buildings, even after new 2024–2025 measures to improve utilization and streamline disposals. (files.gao.gov) Recent legislation and policy—such as extending the Public Buildings Reform Board to 2026 and directing GSA to recommend more sales—anticipate that agencies will shed “millions of square feet” over coming years, but that is a forward‑looking expectation rather than a completed outcome, and it does not quantify any 75% reduction of the existing surplus. (federalnewsnetwork.com) GSA has announced only incremental steps (for example, putting eight more buildings, about 1.5 million square feet, into its sale/disposal process in late 2024), which are significant but small relative to the total federal office portfolio and to GAO’s description of the scale of underused space. (federalnewsnetwork.com) In 2025, the administration also floated lists of several hundred “non‑core” federal buildings (over 440 in one version) as potential sale candidates, but those lists have been revised or withdrawn and refer to contemplated disposals, not completed divestitures, and still do not map cleanly to “75% of currently unused/underutilized office space” as defined in the prediction. (wired.com) Because (1) the prediction uses an open‑ended “will ultimately” time horizon, and (2) available public data do not yet document either success or failure relative to the specific 75% target, there is not enough information at this time to judge the prediction as clearly right or wrong. It remains unresolved rather than disproven, so the most accurate rating is ambiguous.