$6.99 to register your bike? What a joke.
Come on.
Local bike shops and cycling organizations here (Germany) offer what they call "Codierung", where they permanently engrave a number on the frame and register it with police along with your contact information for a few bucks.
The idea of the police engraving anything into my bike is horrifying. And impossible for carbon bikes.
And once again, it won't be difficult to get registration for free. The reason that there is a fee is to encourage people to register their bike when they are in a bike shop rather than putting it off because they can just do it at home - plus, by adding a fee we will make it easier to track thieves who register bikes they've stolen.
You simply haven't solved the major problem here, which is one of discoverability and easy, decentralized lookup.
"So, you're claiming that this bike, which has a frame number that matches the one reported stolen, is in fact a different bike with the same frame number, one on which both producers neglected to brand in any way shape or form, and that you have no record of purchasing..."
And if uniqueness is somehow important, then the idea of local governments having some registry is just as bad. My road bike would have four of these silly municipal numbers on them from four different municipalities, about to be five. I can't imagine that this number is any more unique amongst municipalities as it is amongst vendors.
To me, "Law Enforcement: register here with bona fides to get separate access to our database to search." isn't as time or resource consuming as "send us on a tour of the US to tell police and bike shops in person", or the stretch goal of $65,00, which is "send us on an even bigger tour of the US..."
The missing piece is tying that serial number to me, and that's something that the local police in the US do not do.
It shouldn't be tough to get registered for free ever - but by charging a fee we give bike shops a value they can give to their customers.
I make $7 in ~4 minutes; I'm sure almost all of us here make it in less than 10-15 minutes. Things we want cost money because people need to eat.