By the way, I see that you compare costs of 'mining gold' to costs of 'mining Bitcoin'. Bitcoin has no costs. There's no such thing as Bitcoin mining. That's just stupid narrative repeated by people. Costs in the bitcoin system refer to a random trial and error of finding a solution to a hash combination. Creating new Bitcoin units has zero cost. It's just a simple function of a code.
yes i do tend to agree that the term "mining" is a bit misleading to what people are actually doing. they're not really doing anything except wasting electricity so they can get more bitcoin. they're not really miners in a traditional sense like a gold miner. gold miners actually find something in the ground. bitcoin "miners" aren't finding bitcoin.
The thing is that in order to justify their huge investments in nothing, people will say anything, no matter how stupid it is.