Swapping USDT for SOL
Solana finishes while you are still looking at the screen. That changes what a swap feels like more than any fee schedule does. It also has a cost nobody mentions until their first transfer fails: a small deposit to open the account that holds a token.
100 USDT 
SOL The rent nobody warns you about
On Solana, holding a token requires an account to hold it in, and opening one costs a small deposit in SOL. It is refundable when the account is closed, but it is real and it is paid before your first transfer of that token can land. Here it is part of the operation rather than a surprise you fund separately.
Speed you can act on
Sub-second settlement means a swap is done before you have finished reading the confirmation. For a cross-chain move the slower side sets the pace, so the estimate you are shown is for the pair, not for Solana alone.
Addresses that cannot be confused
Solana uses base58, not 0x. You cannot paste an Ethereum address into a Solana field by accident and have it look plausible, which removes the single most common way people lose money moving between chains.
Fast is a different kind of cheap
Solana’s fee is small, but the thing people actually notice is that they stop waiting. A transfer that finishes before you have switched apps changes how often you are willing to make one, which over a month matters more than the fraction of a cent each one costs.
What you are exchanging away
SOL rises and falls; the dollars you swapped did not. Buying the coin makes sense if you intend to use Solana or hold it deliberately, and makes none if you were only trying to make a stablecoin transfer work, and that requires nothing from you here.
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Several wallets in one account, unlinked on-chain
Hold as many wallets as you need inside one Telegram account. Their addresses are not linked on-chain, so paying from one tells nobody about the others. Send to a @username or to any address.
Questions
Do I need SOL before I can receive tokens on Solana?
The account deposit is settled inside the operation, so no, you do not have to fund it in advance.
How fast is it?
Solana confirms in under a second; on a cross-chain move the other end sets the rest.
Can I mistake a Solana address for an Ethereum one?
No. They use different formats entirely: base58 versus 0x-hex.