Fair point. I was going through the CMC top coins in top 100, and nearly all of the coins are either defunct or faded into extreme obscurity. Mostly Litecoin & DigiByte & Doge and maybe Peercoin and Feathercoin to an extent.

Given the nature of Tether, would it not be FUDded out of existence? Back in 2014 I would expect users to never use Tether since cryptocurrency as a whole was very niche and Bitcoiners were usually developers, no?

It is distinct from most of the other altcoin projects that got started in the 2012-2014 era. Perhaps that is what made them so successful. Most of the other early altcoins are gone now (Litecoin is an strong exception).

Scoresby

bitcoin

Tether Fun Unbelievable Details - Part I

Why is Tether (USDT) even called cryptocurrency? Doesn't look like it has any of the qualities you would expect a cryptocurrency to have, other than a blockchain, which they frequently reroll or mute. With information here, they are even more "unreputable"