I seem to recall that people are setting up VPSs for around $20 per month or $240 per year, which is double the cost of setting up a Raspberry Pi for a year as outlined above.  Thus while NXT is at its current $0.04 each, capturing NXT with VPSs is a break-even proposition.

These are actually great numbers.  The return-on-investment or ROI for forging NXT is positive NOW and will be even more profitable when NXT coins become more valuable.  Thus even with NXT as a Proof-of-Stake coin without mining, there is STILL financial motivation for people to run the nodes required to keep the NXT system going.  For a pre-mined coin, that is a remarkable statement.

Oh and the daily cost of the NXT support web running on 300 Raspberry Pi nodes is $36,000 / 365 = $98.63 per day.  Do it on 300 VPSs instead, and the daily NXT support web cost is around $200 per day.