Depends on the chain. Some networks are quite fast.

But it could also be theater, yeah. A friend of mine buys USDT on a P2P exchange and immediately sells it (so, sends money to a stranger’s bank account and then gets paid by another stranger). It could just as well be some e-wallet thing like WebMoney or whatever, but the fact that you can move USDT to your own wallet instead of immediately selling it makes it a bit more reassuring I guess.