Sounds about right, I'd say its def harder than mining gold which anyone in the world can do with the right devices, mining bitcoin takes some sort of knowledge plus now a days its not even profitable unless you're a mining farm.
To mine gold you must first find a place where there is gold. With crypto, you can mine anywhere.
Usually, to mine gold legally, you also need to acquire mining rights, which is pretty much impossible for "anyone in the world", only an established, large enough mining company can even get the opportunity to do so. Then you need millions of dollars of investment, machines, manpower, chemicals, environmental studies, etc.
What the Paypal guy is saying is only true when talking about large operations. A large BTC mining operation is expensive just like a gold mine, but it might also not yield as much money compared to the investment.
As an example a mining company has a plan to open a gold mine in French Guyana, the investment is 800 millions euros, and the gold they expect to extract is 3 billions euros.
So a good margin.
According to some analysts, large BTC miners and ASIC producers in China have invested gigantic amounts of money with little hope of recouping the investments.
