You seem to personify aspects of the protocol. I don't know why people do that. It's also one of the reasons we got into this mess I think.

I get that it's common for an individual to be associated with a masternode but a "miner" is not a person as in a coal miner who actually goes down a mine with a pick axe. Nor is a masternode. These are functional properties of the protocol that issue coins to addresses under distinct constraints. Thats how they should be appraised.

So in the general case, the "difficulty" must be aggregated across the chain which means that any economic entity that operates a hybrid business model will have a lower aggregate difficulty level than one in a pure mining operation. The former therefore has the advantage which means its likely not only exist but grow in prevalence.

There's therefore no basis for dismissing thunderjet's assertions about hybrid mining groups.