There's a ton of bad press about tether, however it has gone through audits and they've apparently shown that tether is actually backed by real money.

In my opinion the pegged cryptos are only meant for short term holding, it doesn't make sense to me that you'd convert USD into tether just to hold onto it for a long time. If USD drops in price, tether will too since it's pegged to USD.  These cryptos are more for short term trades, so you can convert bitcoin into a form of USD without actually taking your money off an exchange and converting it into fiat.

I would not feel safe holding any of these backed cryptos for a long time since they feel a lot more risky than just holding bitcoin or any of the larger alts. If crypto does get banned, you're going to have a very hard time converting the backed crypto into fiat.