Maybe he's from a society where Bitcoin is restricted from it citizens a place where there's tough regulations by the government and citizens who secretly use it have to be careful not to attract the authorities, for instance the past administration of my country restricted the use of Bitcoin and other coins at large so we were very careful cause most the security authorities who were delusional took it personal and would immediately tag one for fraud if caught.
However I don't think it's a nice idea for him to generalise since there are countries where the regulations ain't tough and people freely use Bitcoin for different use case, what he should've said is that people should protect themselves from potential robbery by not exposing the amount they're worth to the strange people or sometimes even close neighbours, these are tough times and lazy people who can't invest or hodl Bitcoin could easily plot with kidnappers and steal your coin, it would've been very understandable if he had explained it that way.
In other words, one can spread the aware of Bitcoin and it's important, with specific reason of why it's good for people to hodl it including the benefits they stand to gain in future but avoid letting them know what she or he is worth in Bitcoin, for security reasons.
I don't fear the government because I know there are ways to acquire and hold bitcoins that the government will not even know that's what I loved about Bitcoin, it is like right under their noses, although to clear your first assumption, you are right, crypto is not legal until this year in my country, but I was not active since a long time but I was monitoring the market not regularly but like on weekly basis or monthly.
I don't like the idea of sharing our personal holdings with anyone because of such news, where you tell someone and he tell another person and the word spreads like fire, but not in an adoptive way but it can attract bad attention like in my first post the teacher got kidnapped just because his son has 3 bitcoin if you looked at it.
I can spread the word about bitcoin but most of the people already know it, I did not know it before but I had my ways which I did not know before I am going to learn about Bitcoin, so I just kept searching and learning, end up here somehow and learned a lot from here especially the Jayjuan. You are right we should not have to tell them how much we own, but we can tell them the importance and future of it. But only if they will listen, because I think bitcoin is at a stage that it need no marketing like this.