It's not used very often except for trading, but here's why it's valuable for that:

1. shorter block times: can get from 1 exchange to another quicker for arbitrage opportunities. (also less fees)
2. "confidential" transactions: not entirely confidential (sender and recieving addresses still visable) but unlike bitcoin, amount (and asset type) is confidential. This way, if you are moving a bunch of L-BTC (LiquidBTC) or LUSDT(LiquidUSDTether) to an exchange from cold storage or another exchange, people are less likely to front-run you.
3. maybe if you can get your funds on and off exchanges quicker and cheaper, maybe you will keep it on exchanges less. An exchange that is part of the liquid group that you use can go down, but as long as your funds arent on it when it does, your good.
4. its a way of issuing assets on bitcoin (tether, NFTs, even registered securites where certain addresses are whitelisted as qualified investers, paving the way for tokenized stocks, a legit use of tokens, where they will come with legal enforcement.

I wish it was used more than it is. Samson Mow's company Jan3, which work's on nation-state adoption is going to be re-releasing Blockstream's "Aqua Wallet," promising to have easy BTC, LN, Liquid BTC and other Liquid assets like Liquid USDT. This may be a gamechanger.

Alot of maxis are against it. But they had the opportunity to create a token while making this. They didnt. They used Bitcoin for this network. This is just another tool of Bitcoin, and has some attributes that may be able to be of use for privacy purposes in the future if more people use it.

genuinely curious if anyone has gotten any value out of it or ever found a use case for it.

Wait until fees on the bitcoin blockchain become higher again -- interest in Liquid network will jump.

Here's a post with a number of ways Liquid network can be used:

What is the Liquid Network? https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900002016823-What-is-the-Liquid-Network-

I can hold the keys to my L-BTC (e.g., using Blockstream Green wallet), and can transfer that more quickly than I can with bitcoin (blocks on Liquid network occur every minute, and a transaction is deemed confirmed / final with just two block confirmations).

So if I want to pay an LN invoice but I don't have a node and I don't already have funds on an LN wallet -- but I have L-BTC, I can do something like deposit via Liquid network to CoinOS Classic and two or three minutes later I can then use those funds to pay an LN invoice. (I haven't done this since CoinOS created the new front-end so maybe someone might confirm this still works now that it is CoinOS Classic).

There are a couple other swap services that offer (L-BTC <--> LN BTC) as well (SideShift.ai and Flyp.me), but neither of those can be used from the U.S., and have a higher fee).

KYC-Free-Instant-Exchanges https://cointastical.github.io/KYC-Free-Instant-Exchanges

I use it pretty regularly for onchain spending txns. I peg-in largish chunks every so often and spend out with peg-outs via sideswap.

I wouldn't mind spending from there as well if more folks used it (instead of pegging out). I bought a Jade wallet using it and it was pretty much the same experience as onchain bitcoin.

If you want to issue a token for some reason than it's a reasonable choice. Your other option is to use something with smart contracts, but then people will be afraid of your token because it might contain some scam inside the smart contract.

Thank you for your question. I learnt something new today!

I've used it.

True that not many others do.

We'll have to see what happens with ES bonds & tether too

Very hard to push people there even if they use Stellar for their projects. I know an example of token for local economy.

Yes, I do. Mostly for USDT. But not too often.

https://i.postimg.cc/5yFLK83g/liquid10-2-3x.png A snapshot of the Liquid ecosystem in 2022

Source:

The Truth About Liquid https://blog.liquid.net/the-truth-about-liquid

Related:

What's the best way to exchange Liquid Tether (L-USDT) for BTC?

https://twitter.com/bradmillscan/status/1596247946357575680 [Nitter]

And the reply:

BTC (mainchain) best is Bitfinex

For L-BTC

@tdexnetwork @bit_matrix @side_swap

https://twitter.com/tierotiero/status/1596341234590961665 [[Nitter}(https://nitter.at/tierotiero/status/1596341234590961665)]

There are no exchanges in the U.S. that support L-BTC (Liquid network) (other than P2P exchanges such as Bisq which have L-BTC has payment method).

How to Get L-BTC https://blog.liquid.net/how-to-get-l-btc

https://sideswap.io wallet is a good start.

What the heck is the Liquid network?