Tether definitely sucks, but it was an absolutely reasonable response to banks randomly freezing out USD bank accounts of various exchanges, for various reasons

Tether definitely sucks, but it was an absolutely reasonable response to banks randomly freezing out USD bank accounts of various exchanges, for various reasons. If you're an exchange that's going to be touching actual USD bank accounts, it turns out you need a fleet of lawyers and significant political and business connections to maintain the relationships required to keep the money flowing. USDT allows smaller, more agile exchanges to play with USD, and delegates the icky legacy finance stuff to the larger players who are set up to deal with it. Of course no one should ever try to store long term value in USDT, but that's not what it's for. It's a tool for shifting the risk of touching USD to people that are actually prepared to handle it, which is fine.