I am really liking Bitshares right now. I'm using the distributed exchange. It's the first time I've done crypto trading and I am doing well. I'm making successful trades and the experience is good. It took a while for me to learn how to do use the Bitshares DEX, but the time investment has been worth it.

I'm not sure what is a competitor to Bitshares. Waves is also supposed to be a distributed exchange. I haven't tried to use it yet, but I've bought and sold Waves coins on the Bitshares exchange.

I'm not that interested in Tether, as I'd like to trade back and forth between crypto pairs instead of something tied to the US dollar.