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.
With current price, you make red numbers when mining. You can make almost double the DRK/day by renting your rig and buying at current price.
And with masternodes, getting 20% of miners payments ... What reason does one have to mine ? Except take it as a hobby project ?
Because not everybody has money for 1000 DRK and a lot of people already have mining equipment. Plus, a side effect of masternodes is increased price -- meaning that there is a very good reason to keep mining for the future. This is not even counting the increased popularity (e.g. price) of the coin once Darksend is completely finished and open-sourced.
You have a point only if someone is planning to spend a large amount of money on a mining farm in which case they'd be better off buying DRK and setting up a node.