Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phone number gets used during account recovery; when I reset my iPhone once without a second Authy device to activate it, I was locked out for 24h while it bombarded my number with calls and texts about the impending restore. I appreciated that safety measure.
And I don't appreciate being forced into a "feature" that specifically subverts the entire god damn point of 2FA codes and leaves them in an unprotected state on some third party server. Great!
(Side note: Authy backups are encrypted client-side with the user's backup password. They're not unprotected on a third-party server; Authy has no ability to decrypt them. https://authy.com/blog/how-the-authy-two-factor-backups-work...)