I can buy 1 gram of gold for $50.

I can't buy 1 "gram" of  a masternode for $X. (you can't buy a fractional amount of a masternode).

....bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are *base money*. You can't run a financial system on base money alone - at least not a developed one. It would be like trying to ride the tour-de-france in bottom gear the whole way round, including the mountain stages.

Layers evolve on top of it which disperse the wealth.

For example, lets take a hypothetical scenario where Bitcoin captures 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) or world asset marketcap. Meanwhile, Dash captures one percent (1%) of Bitcoin's marketcap. (It's currently at a quarter of one percent BTC marketcap).

That would put the value of masternode collateral at around half a million dollars ($500,000).

Lets say that's enough of a cap for a certain institutional - such as trade union, pension fund, corporate trust, whatever, to at least hedge into 10 masternodes which would represent a capital sum of $5 million fiat equivalent.

The annualised return on that element of their portfolio (at today's payout levels) would be around $350,000 (350 thousand dollars) if realised, just from blockchain revenue alone.  Remember that masternode revenue as mining revenue is not fiat gain until you cash into dollars and coming against that is a constant increase in coin supply through mining, so it's possibly not as great a return as that but still measurable.

However, the corporate fund has that money invested on behalf of its subscribers who may number in the 100's of thousands. Moreover, although there is "counterparty risk" for the fund subscribers, there is none for the fund (necessarily) since they are at liberty to manage the base asset - the blockchain keys - themselves if they so choose.