I have been using https://steemauto.com/ the past few weeks and I think it is quite useful. I started with 20 accounts with 100% vote. In 3 days I had to turn it of to allow my voting power to recover. I tried again with 50% and 2 posts per day limit but then holidays come and people posted a lot less. Now I use 70% vote strength (which is a decent enough one cent), 2 posts per day limit and I have set the voter to stop if my voting power gets below 70%. The good thing is that I can vote in the first 30' after the post is published so my curation rewards are much better. Of course I don't read more posts but I don't read less, either :)
About crypto - paypal transactions I saw this a couple of months ago but I haven't tried it myself. I think though that powering up with the current steem price is a great idea!