56 Masternodes would be pretty profitable considering almost no electricity usage to run them. Much better investment than mining equipment.
Now wait a minute.
It may be a better investment, but if everybody thought that and nobody would care to do energy expensive mining instead, then the coin would never keep the desired hashrate to secure the network.
The Masternodes are not here to secure the blockchain etc... they do a different job.
Without a secure transaction system the masternodes become pretty useless.