Cannot confirm. I registered my .de-Domain in 2005. That was 15 years ago. It wasn't that difficult, and quite cheap (imho 12€ for a year). So the tech barriers vanished a long time ago.
Spammers are in business. When certain costs fall, it makes their enterprise more profitable.
UK fullz can go for like 40usd a pop.
The date is sometimes used to confuse people when they're reading it so they think it's part of the URL and not the actual domain name.
It only temporarily solves the problem and ruins it for the rest of the customers. There are other ways to address scammers that do not involve making the entire market more expensive for expensive's sake.