For reference, take a look at the almost infinite list of MN's over at masternodes.online to get a feel for how many MNs projects are puking up every 2 min. LOOK I GET IT, MN'S MAKE YOU $$$, BUT 99% WILL FCK YOU.
I got to know about masternodes and the possibility of earning passively from it late December 2017. Fast forward to this month when I decided to take a step and decided to log on to masternodes.online, the sheer number of mastenode projects put me off. So far Dash is the only credible project amongst them and that is way beyond my resources.
Right, Dash and PIVX were really the only ones that benefited from MN's overall. There's such an insane amount of new MN projects coming out per day it's unreal. Take a look at Altcoin Announcements and 23/25 of the posts will be MN based, with many brand new posts, it's almost as bad as ICOs.
@sylance - I'm not saying all MNs are scams, but right now most are and are claiming low supply and high ROI and then disappearing within 2 months. This has happened countless times already and I'm genuinely surprised more people aren't talking about this. With regards to Bitcoin taking up a lot of power, just like mining gold, that's how it gets its value.