Tether is supposedly backed by USD in a bank account in Hong Kong that no one has seen or audited. They are literally printing money from thin air - it is the US Fed all over again. Horrible.
bitUSD, bitCNY, bitGold, bitSilver etc. on the Bitshares DEX (decentralized exchange - can't get hacked) are all backed by 200% worth of BTS (Bitshares tokens).
Each $1 of bitUSD is backed by $2 worth of BTS - just like how fiat money is supposed to be backed by Gold or some other thing of value (ie. $1USD used to be exchangeable for $1 of Gold at any time, that was whole point of paper/fiat money).
China is always ahead of the curve and they are using bitCNY like crazy right now, with 10's of millions of dollars in bitCNY volume on the Bitshares DEX every day.
Head over to bitshares.org and download the wallet, which is also a complete decentralized exchange where you can trade crypto tokens. It's awesome - you can hold your tokens (BTS, BTC etc.) right in the wallet, which is safe, but trade just like a centralized exchange with no worries about the government shutting the exchange down or some clown 'hacking' the exchange and stealing your money.
Yes, some Google on the company/people/mechanism behind Tether is very enlightening. They create Tether tokens at will and claim each one is backed 1:1 by USD in a Hong Kong bank account... that is not audited by a third party or otherwise transparent. Lots of rumors about them creating Tether to buy up all sorts of crypto... just like the US Fed or a ponzi. Anyone that believes there is a bank account with $400,000,000.00 USD just sitting in it is off their rocker. Where in the hell did they get $400m to back Tether? They didn't, and at some point some government agency will come knocking and ask to see the account. What happens then?
Bitshares feels like the one crypto that is staying true to the original principles behind Bitcoin - to free the world from the scams and greed of big corps and governments. Sadly, though BTS should be in the top 5 on CMC by any metric (just became the longest blockchain on the planet - 20 million blocks - because it is so heavily used) speculators and investors give it no love. Maybe because it is so honest and truly decentralized? Bitcoin, Ether and Ripple are more centralized than any fiat currency - people don't understand that all three are controlled by perhaps a dozen individuals. Bitcoin and Ether are slow, can't scale and are incredibly wasteful - literally wasting billions of dollars worth of electricity to secure the chains via POW.
Bitshares, Steem and EOS are truly the future of crypto and are the only real options to create real change in the financial world - freedom from centralized control, government, greedy wall street types.
Anyone that thinks the dozen or so individuals that control BTC/ETH/XRP aren't in bed with various governments and big corps are not seeing the forest for the trees.
Disclaimer: I own zero BTC/ETH/XRP. :)
Tether may be a scam. There is no proof that it is, nor is there any proof that it isn't, however the circumstantial evidence weights heavily against them. IMHO, there's a distinct possibility that Tether is a nearly $400M mushroom cloud waiting to happen.