How will this resolve if such a program is implemented in an unconstitutional manner (e.g. via an executive order, while a decision by Congress would be necessary) which causes courts to reverse the whole process?

Lutnick confirms they’ve sold 1000 in a single day

Is that enough to resolve all options below 1000 as No @Bayesian? Or would you need more concrete confirmation of that figure?

@elf Since these options are linked multiple choice, i cant resolve some options early. I can’t say for sure whether these count or he’s misstating things, but those would probably count? I don’t know the details for these gold cards already sold but at the end of the year i’ll make a more precise accounting of the total count

the fact that the almost identical polymarket market has 0 cards sold at 16% still makes me think I might be missing something so I don’t wanna confirm that these 1000 cards sold definitely count, yet. However they seem likely to

This all doesn't make much sense to me. Lutnick is the Secretary of Commerce, but visas are managed by the State Department. The requirements for the existing EB-5 investor visa have been defined by act of Congress. There's no mention of the new gold card that I can find on the Commerce or State department websites. So I suspect that "sold" is being used here in a very loose sense.

I have no idea on what basis the administration thinks they can set visa requirements without congressional approval (other than, okay, this administration thinks the law doesn't exist and they can do anything, I guess). @Bayesian How will you handle this market if cards are sold but their legal status is in question?

@elf I'd love to bet on how many are in use. That seems more solid than the hard to evaluate "sold" state.

@elf oops

@elf what account do we think the Commerce Secretary is putting the money in? Just straight into the treasury?

Also if l were going to throw down even $1 mil I’d want a receipt, plus proof that a path to my green card actually existed.

Seems like selling 1,000 passes to become US citizens, a process that ordinarily takes years and much coordination across government agencies, at $5 mil each should have more of a paper trail than a post on Xitter.

What if I’m a leader of Tren de Aragua? Plausible, since when other countries have tried this type of citizenship program it has mostly appealed to organized criminals. What do I show ICE so they don’t load me on a plane?

Or maybe it’s worth considering that perhaps the Commerce Secretary was exaggerating some aspect of the claim about selling 1,000 already to generate hype and manufacture legitimacy?

@jcb My feeling is that they have to be real usable visas issued by the Department of State (not just like, concepts of a visa), but that any potential legal challenges should be irrelevant.

@n_t sub “greencard with a path to citizenship” for “visa” as they are not the same thing and the former is what was promised

@BlueDragonfsir enough. I do wonder what the long term features of that residency will be.

Want me to change the unit to # gold cards?

What happens if gold cards are sold, but at a different price than originally announced?

It’s times like these that I wish I traded on Polymarket. 0 was trading at like 15% a week ago, lol.

How on earth did the numeric market mechanism come up with 6,700 as the top-line number for this question, when the market says there's only a 15% chance of > 5000? I guess this is some naive expected value calculation from the categories?

@jcb I don't see a 5k> option, I'm also seeing 5k-10k, 10k-25k, and a few more

@jcb correct. rough estimate:
0.03*100,000+0.03*66,000+0.03*17,000+0.05*7500+0.05*3800+0.05*1800+0.15*600+0.20*50+0.42*0 = 6245

the mean of a lot of fat tailed things is much higher than the median. add to that the interest rate-induced inaccuracies and you get pretty high estimates in a lot of these numeric markets. same thing on kalshi

@spiderduckpig yes, 15% is from adding up the probabilities for 5k-10k and higher.

@Bayesian ok, wow. And I think the actual probability distribution doesn't even need to be fat tailed for this to be a problem, since because of interest rate considerations, buckets are unlikely to be driven near to 0. So the mean heavily depends on what categories the market creator defines!

Median seems like a more illuminating (or at least equally illuminating) summary statistic.

rgba(255, 215, 0, 1) cards

why is the alpha a float instead of a byte?

@MingCat I think CSS3 web colors typically use a float for alpha and either a byte or a percentage for rgb

@spiderduckpig I suppose that makes sense!