[crasl]

> But to buy bitcoin for tether, you first need someone to sell bitcoin for tether. And this guy then has tether. What is he going to do with the tether?

He may not have an off-ramp (which means he can only sell the Tether to someone else, either directly or using cryptos as a bridge). He might be a crypto trader or even trader of other kind of merchandise and need the liquidity provided by Tether (which is for all purposes, "real" as long as the entire thing doesn't collapse)

Majority of the USDT volume come from SE Asia where countries often have strict capital control, and in these situations USDT or cryptos do provided utility by allowing people to circumvent the capital control. That's also why there's a crackdown of crypto OTC desks in China reported a few weeks ago.