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.