I think at this point it should be pretty clear that Signal never had the goal of anonymity which is an orthogonal concept to privacy. While I would support sign-up without phone numbers, it doesn’t address the same threat-model and there are many alternatives if anonymity is your goal.

But I want near-perfect privacy with usability, which Signal provides for me and all my contacts. Who cares if my government knows I use Signal, as long as they don’t know who I talk to and what we talk about.