Great to see such a pre-eminent organisation releasing papers, and in draft, for free.

Not having yet read the paper, but commenting purely on the picture:
The similarity isn't accurate: An individual of moderate means can still afford to contribute meaningfully at the ASIC level for BITmining, unlike gold mining.
Basic infrastructure for an ASIC can cost about $1k with a moderate-low ROI, but still some ROI, unlike Gold mining at the pit mining level. Even 1 truck, or digger is so unfathomably beyond reach of the average joe it is just ridiculous.

The scales just do not compare.

Crash