Been thinking about Tether for a long time and it indeed is fiat in its unit of account so its going to go down forever. Its not stable in that sense. But we live in a world of perceptions and as the US dollar is the unit of account that has the most influence world wide things like Tether have a massive demand for the unbanked and the banked. I imagine this is largely due to the reality that using Tether is not hard in places where people can't use dollars digitally.

If I wasn't a bitcoiner I think I'd be on board with USDT. It isn't free banking but it kinda feels like it. Its not hard money but it is digital money. It is fully centralized though and censors transactions.

Here's the other thing I wonder about it. Is Tether a threat to Ripple and other projects like XRP? The XRP maxis will probably say it isn't but I wonder about it.