But that doesn't help much if the entire contact list is a list of trash mail adresses (in the case of Wire) or a list of random IDs (in the case of Threema). And at least Threema does not store any information about your contacts on their servers.
Can you obtain a phone number without any ID in the US? Because you can't in large parts of Europe.
Yes. About 10 years ago, before Google Voice, I needed a local area-code number to work with my apartment buzzer. I bought a $15 Tracphone with cash at Walmart and activated it at a payphone (mainly just to see if I could).
If it’s the latter, I suspect that won’t happen in practice for the majority of users.
I haven’t heard of threema, I guess users have to share their IDs manually with each other in that case?