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Not like the banks. Those are carefully scrutinized by large well funded regulators and auditors and subject to complex legal requirements developed over decades.

To be fair tether hasn't actually lost billions of dollars yet, whereas banks absolutely have. Overall though I don't feel inclined to trust most stable coins. The cryptography protects your virtual currency but the governance is what protects the assets backing them, and the governance looks weak.

Stablecoins are indeed centralized. That's why when people say that stablecoins are the solution, i always roll my eyes. Native assets in blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana etc can't be freezed as they are native assets in decentralized networks.

Yes but given the dominance (and vulnerability) of CEXes, assets are often effectively frozen after a big theft.

Stablecoins are more like a bridge for fiat. So that it's only partially decentralized not all that terrible.

Yes, it’s kinda been that way since at least the ethereum fork when the large players in the network just decided to rewrite history because whoopsie.