Sure, but nobody would hold onto USDT for a long time anyway. It's not meant to be a long-term investment.
As long as it facilitates short-term transactions and people are agreeable to trading it at 1 USD, that black box system fulfills its mission as a product, and doesn't need to fulfill anything else.
If you don't trade cryptocurrency and aren't invested in the market day to day, it very likely doesn't matter.
> As long as it facilitates short-term transactions and people are agreeable to trading it at 1 USD
Right now this is the case because the US AG announcements have not fundamentally changed the day to day use of the token, as you stated.
However, as the lawsuit moves forward, the probabilities of Bitfinex having to shut down due to bankruptcy or criminal liability, and the probability that the Tether blockchain has to be shut down, are going to change and may possibly increase.
The likelihood of these events occurring will cause the Tether premium to change accordingly, and as it increases, more and more market participants are going to cease to use it in favor of more reliable stablecoins.
The problem is that it's impossible to predict what the catalyst for these events will be, and it's up to individual traders to determine whether or not they think the day they're holding Tether is going to be the day something happens to cause the market to lose confidence in it.
As long as it facilitates short-term transactions and people are agreeable to trading it at 1 USD, that black box system fulfills its mission as a product, and doesn't need to fulfill anything else.