I haven't made a whole quilt that way, but I have used little tacks like that on smaller quilted items. I've also used one iteration of some of the decorator stitches on my machine in the same way. I had the same thought, that it would work like a tied quilt, just a different kind of tie. Some of the items I've washed many, many times (pet beds), and they've held up. I didn't bury the ends, I just cut them off, but that's up to you.
I've also put tacks in the middle of large squares when quilting with SITD (if I want to quilt no more than 4 inches apart and one of the squares is 6 inches, for example).