At the moment, it is not a viable business opportunity, unless you have millions of dollars to start big.
It's ENTIRELY practical to set it up as a profitable business on a LOT less than "millions" - just not HUGE scale, and you have to mind the costs a bit closer than the big-scale folks can get away with.
$100k would be PLENTY to start up a small professional mining farm BUSINESS - I'm pretty sure I've got less than HALF that invested INCLUDING reinvestment of a lot of my mining income for the 4 years or so I mined "as a hobby".
Cooling costs had better be a LOT less than 50% of your electric use - you can do mechanical air conditioning for less than that, and THAT makes costs quite a bit too high to be truely competative.
If you're putting much more than 10% of your electric usage into cooling, you need to rethink your cooling setup.
Don't count on getting a business loan though, Cryptocoin mining is a LOT too speculative for most banks to even think about dealing with.
For a small farm, you don't NEED staff.
Water usage should be very small, unless you are using evaporative cooling - then it's STILL pretty small.
Idaho electric rates aren't all THAT low - for low electric rates in the USA, you're looking at 3 specific counties in Central Washington state.
Idaho might be a good bit less than 11 cents/KWH in areas it's got hydropower access though - but it's certainly not in the 3 cent ballpark.
1. No, For true cooling costs it will be around 50% and that is for CRAC units that are specifically designed to maintain temperature and humidity for data centers. Sure you can set up some fans and try to cool with ambient temperature but I don't think this is sustainable for long term growth of the mine. (This of course depends on if you live in Iceland or Canada)
2. I will generally agree with this point other than people have gotten financing from both government backed loans and also banks. It will be difficult but it is not impossible. In addition, there are other funding sources besides traditional banks.
3. I definitely agree! You only need 1 per 100 rigs on average or maybe if you are stretching yourself maybe double that.
4.
Idaho, as of Feb 2017, is literally one of the cheapest states in the entire country in regards to commercial electricity rates. I simply was talking generally about a state but yes if there is a hydroelectric dam then the rates could be around .03-.05 per kwh. The thing I found funny and surprising was Virginia is very cheap for commercial electricity rates.