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If you are looking for quick profit on the short term, then indeed 5000-10000 coins for a masternode is too low, but if you are in for the long term it changes everything. You are talking about how profitable can be a masternode but in your calculations you don't take in account the price fluctuation. For example, let's say you set up a masternode for 10000 coins and it rewards you with 1000 coins a month. If the coins stay at the price you bought them at the first place, then it may not look really profitable indeed, but now if you add the price fluctuation factor to that : Let's do the maths, let's say you bought your 10000 coins for 0,01$ each, your masternode is worth 100$ and 1000 coins rewards per month would be worth 10$. But now, with the development going and the demand and supply changing, imagine that the coin is now worth 1$. If you have hold all your coins until then, you have a masternode which is worth 10k$, add to that all the rewards per months you got so far which are worth 1000$ each, not to mention that you probably put everything at staking and added other masternodes when you got enough to do so. Does it still look not profitable anymore ?
Personally I have already enough coins to set up some masternodes and I will run them on a vps h24 even if it cost me money at first. And I won't pay the vps with the masternodes rewards but with real money. This way I will hold all my coins and when they will be worth a lot more I will have a lot of money. As simple as that. It's a bet on the future, maybe the price won't increase much but maybe it will. In my opinion it will, and I'll do everything possible to make that happen. And I know that I'm not the only investor who plan to do that.
I'm personally looking to hold for the long term. How many depends on what I see from the dev-team.
Coin price should not enter the calculations. If coins go up, I make a profit even if I don't stake/MN.
But even for the long term, why would I do MN, if it's more profitable to just stake? If the coin goes up, I would still want as many coins as possible.
If you want long term commitment I believe you should set the cost of MN relatively high, so only those who are actually commited buy in.
Also, I have to question your sanity when you are willing to run a VPS w/ MN at a loss. Why not save yourself the money and using the savings to support the coin by buying up coins, and staking them?