Its not the same at USDT at all.
There is no "monkey picture."

When you hold sets in the lightning network, you are holding a multi-sig key and your sats are guaranteed by the main chain and its hashed time law contracts.

You are changing your *security guarantees*
until you settle to mainchain,
but the fundamental units you are holding are sats. actual sats.

You can make a pedantic argument that until it settles to the main chain it isnt "real bitcoin"
but that would be tiresome.

if you're familiar with CTV or some of the covenant proposals and their UTXO sharing ideas, its more like that than a shitcoin.