I don't understand why people don't understand this. Telegram is already full of spam. If it was possible to sign-up with just username and password, Telegram would die overnight.
I understand putting a physical cost on an account in terms of spam prevention. This is actually a really good idea because spam thrives mainly due to it costing so little.
However why the fake number? Why not ask for money directly?
The codebase is a good point, hopefully this will be fixed in the future.
Backwards compatibility probably? I think having a phone number present is built so deep in the architecture that itβs easier to add a fake number than change it overnight and wait for universal adoption of new client versions.
