We are not interested in charging money for accounts. The waitlist exists for us to manage abuse of the free account system, as well as a way for us to manage the allocation of very significant amounts of STEEM and Steem Power required to create tens of thousands of accounts.
We were wasting huge amounts of money (to bot signups) when creation was instant. That abuse is almost entirely gone now.
WHY?! I just don't get it.
It's like saying: "We are not interested in paying customers."
If Steemit sold the stake you already have, you would get more money to hire developers. If Steemit bought steem for SP from exchanges, it would create more demand for steem and support the price.
I see only benefits.
Oh, and one thing that I forgot from the OP. I have a suspicion that many of those who would benefit the most from uncensorable publishing platform are also reluctant giving any information about themselves to some firm. For those people buying an account with Monero or Zcash would be optimal.