The Bitcoin-equivalent of investing in gold mining would be investing in Bitcoin mining. I don't expect that to happen though, it's totally different. A gold mine and the company that owns it can expect long-term productivity, whereas a Bitcoin miner sees his hardware quickly become obsolete.
I think a lot of crypto mining firms are holidng onto a lot of their funds as well in hope that the price increases... You can generally get away without reading an electric metre for a copule of months-years here - I doubt it's much different anywhere else and it'd proabably make it more lucrative for them as they scale up to just wait on it.
... secondly he stated that he doesn't understand Bitcoin and is not willing to invest in something that he doesn't fully understand. Which I can only respect since honestly it is a kind of level headedness that is often missing in crypto.
Yeah most people get stuck learning about crypto so he probably thought he might've got stuck there too. I think there's an extremely high learning curve if you're not accustomed to science/computing before moving into crypto.