But it makes complete sense, and it actually helps YouTubers overall, honestly.
People can no longer go onto YouTube, throw up a few stolen or incendiary videos and then start making bank on them - 10,000 is a completely achievable goal for views. They could have made it 50,000 or 100,000 - 10k is pretty easily achievable for anyone who's serious about working on their YouTube, and given how many chancers it's going to drop out of the community, I think it's better for everybody. I'm just surprised they didn't do it sooner.
Besides, if you don't yet have 10,000 views, Adsense wouldn't be giving you that much money anyway - there's nothing wrong with a little patience in this scenario.