They’re not really meant to go up in value.

The main use is just having something dollar-like that you can move around easily. That’s useful outside the US, but also for plenty of people inside the US depending on what they’re doing; especially businesses that have a hard time getting or keeping normal banking (cough gambling, porn, weed cough).

They’re handy inside crypto since you can move in/out of other assets without touching a bank. And sometimes you can earn yield on them, which is part of the appeal (with the usual “this can blow up” caveats).

Also, there’s a reason every company wants to launch one: if you control the stablecoin, you get the float and the rails. That’s a pretty nice business if people actually use it.

If you already have solid access to USD and don’t care about that flexibility, they’re less compelling.

But yeah, not risk-free at all (depegs, issuer risk, etc). And honestly there probably isn’t much real need for dozens of slightly different stables beyond the business incentives.