It’s there more for historical reasons. The colon builtin : is exactly equivalent to true. It’s traditional to use true when the return value is important, for example in an infinite loop:
while true; do
echo 'Going on forever'
done
It’s traditional to use : when the shell syntax requires a command but you have nothing to do.
while keep_waiting; do
: # busy-wait
done
The : builtin dates all the way back to the Thompson shell, it was present in Unix v6. : was a label indicator for the Thompson shell’s goto statement. The label could be any text, so : doubled up as a comment indicator (if there is no goto comment, then : comment is effectively a comment). The Bourne shell didn’t have goto but kept :.
A common idiom that uses : is : ${var=VALUE}, which sets var to VALUE if it was unset and does nothing if var was already set. This construct only exists in the form of a variable substitution, and this variable substitution needs to be part of a command somehow: a no-op command serves nicely.
See also What purpose does the colon builtin serve?.