Debt and credit are useful and necessary tools, I'm not against them. Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency and I think lots of people understand that. They require trust, which has been breached many times already.
There's a saying: 'not your keys, not your coins'. Cryptocurrency makes it possible to actually own your money when you hold the keys, and it's impossible to take it away from you.
> Tether and exchange deposits are obviously not cryptocurrency
As you say, that is obviously true. Almost as obviously true should be that they are (or at least very hard try to be) _money_. And that should roughly as obviously point to the conclusion that one of the central tenants of cryptofolks' philosophy, fixed money supply, is broken. Fairy tale. Utter crap. Or whatever is your favourite idiom for something that simply, completely, demonstrably and blatantly untrue.
There's a saying: 'not your keys, not your coins'. Cryptocurrency makes it possible to actually own your money when you hold the keys, and it's impossible to take it away from you.