I convinced him on crypto currencies. It didn't take much as I've been pushing it for the past year now. After he was sold on the innovation aspect of it, we wanted to look into exploiting opportunities.
Interesting choice of phrases, "exploiting opportunities." This infers that you wish to get into mining for profit. Understand that the markets are exceptionally volatile, and that there is no "get rich quick" scheme here... those days are long since over, and only a lucky few who jumped on the wagon early made out.
Mining is a very finicky business. The hardware is just one of a dozen moving parts. There's power and cooling. There's difficulty increase. There's fluctuation in coin value. Alternative currencies come and go.
If this is a for-profit venture, you need to treat this like any other volatile market investment, with the added complexities of purchasing, managing, maintaining and reselling hardware.