The battle power statements don't retroactively change anything about the scaling in Part 1 when the battle power system never was a linear system of scale. As I've said many times, the most clear example of this is them treating the gap between a City and Moon Buster as less than a 2x one despite it in actuality a moon buster being millions of times stronger than a city buster, and that's for a comparison after the introduction of scouters to the plot. The strength statements in part 1 specifically refer to factors such as physical strength and speed rather than Ki, which makes sense with how basic characters' usage of Ki was up until the 23rd TB with only a select few being able to pick up the basic bukujutsu.
That said, there's nothing to suggest the 50x boost is for anything other than Ki, the 40 tons feat in particular going against the idea of it linearly increasing physical strength and such rather than just one's battle power, so it'd be illogical not to use the scouter numbers as a base for it.