> that can mean as little as "pay us a few thousand dollars and we'll ignore you."
This is simply not the case. Most, if not all, state money transfer regulations mandate financial reporting to the state, and place limitations on the permissible investments that a licensed entity may hold as backing for customer obligations held in trust. Any failure to comply will result in fines and/or loss of the license (which effectively results in the closure of the money transmission business).
A number of states (California and New York among them) also conduct on-site examinations of licensees' businesses (paid for by the licensed entity). As someone who was has served as a senior executive at a company that undergoes these examinations regularly, I can assure you that they tend to be rigorous and all-encompassing.
> This regulatory framework was created as a way of side-stepping the more onerous regulations that apply to real depository institutions.
This regulatory framework was not created as a way of sidestepping anything. It was created as a way to proactively regulate money transmission.
Money transmitters are not depository institutions; they serve a different, more narrow economic function, and existing regulations are properly tailored to that economic function. In practice that means that money transmitters are required to maintain 100% reserves backing any and all customer obligations, they must hold their reserves only in certain permissible investments (i.e. government debt and bank deposits), and they are required to obtain surety bonds to further insure those obligations.
Venmo, PayPal, Western Union, Money Gram and dozens of other companies are all subject to these requirements, and there has never been any instance that I am aware of where this regulatory arrangement has resulted in consumer funds being lost, in the twenty years since this regulatory regime began to be fully implemented after passage of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Furthermore, I am not seeing what the material difference is between the outstanding obligation represented by USDC and the outstanding obligation represented by a PayPal or a Venmo account. The fact that the law treats them the same is entirely appropriate.
Tether is a problem precisely because it is unlicensed and has thus far illegally evaded these regulations. The fact that Tether is operating illegally in the US should not impugn its competitors that are in fact operating legally.