I believe that cowboy credit is merely a remedy—a fix for the decline in user experience when SN transitioned to a noncustodial model. Nothing more.

After transitioning to noncustodial, zaps require both parties to have their wallets set up. If either party hasn't set up their wallet, the zap will fail. During the early stages of this transition, the proportion of users with properly set up wallets is low, which means most zaps would fail. This would be unacceptable for SN. As a result, cowboy credit was introduced: users who cannot accept Bitcoin would receive cowboy credit instead. Consequently, SN had to prepare an entire mechanism to handle the "issuance" and "consumption" of cowboy credit.

From a conspiracy theory perspective, some might argue that Cowboy Credit is akin to issuing paper money. However, I disagree with this view—I trust SN.