In 2015, I looked into taking the plate off my daily-driver and was going to save MM for a weekend/fun car. I didn’t have the car yet, so I looked into the process of retaining the plate for future use. This is when I noticed the change to the DMV form. They had added “release interest to new owner” in Section 4. This was a game changer.
He also sells NFTs of personalized plates to add value(his theory).