The Federal Reserve is the monopoly issue of US dollars within a legal and policy framework. Tether does not have that legal mandate to issue money! Perhaps a

The Federal Reserve is the monopoly issue of US dollars within a legal and policy framework. Tether does not have that legal mandate to issue money! Perhaps a better comparison would be to banks (as the credit they create is essentially new money), but again, they are subject to restrictions (i.e capital requirements so they can absorb a reasonable level of defaults without ever touching deposits, etc.), operate within a legal framework, and have to stay solvent. So at best you could say Tether is probably an illegal shadow bank that probably isn’t solvent.