The most popular exchanges these days are crypto only. Thus if your a trader that wants to trade against the dollar, you have to do USDT, not the actual dollar
Doesn't this mean that all the market values on crypto only exchanges are kind of suspect? Because if you eventually want to get out of crypto and into dollars (to, you know, buy stuff in the real world) there is a good chance you won't be able to because no one is actually there willing to give you dollars for tethers?
While I'm mindful that all of this is always one fateful day away from collapsing, at the moment it's not a problem. A number of exchanges will trade tethers for any of the major coins (BTC, ETH, LTC) and any major exchange will give you dollars for those, at least on days when withdrawals are functioning.
But they will give you dollars for bitcoin or ether. However, I agree, I never trade tether because that is the last bag you want to hold if the crypto market collapses