USDT will never be able to collapse because basically this coin has a very important role in the crypto market, and almost all exchanges have this trading pair. There are many allegations about Tether but this stable coin still stands in the market, and no one is disappointed to use. If USDT disappears then perhaps everyone in this market will lose money because Bitcoin and USDT are often interlinked and will be very unlikely.
Just because USDT is critical to the market does not mean that it wont/ cant collapse. Furthermore if they are engaged in some sort of fraud/money laundering than i don't see how any regulator could take too kindly to that simply because its collapse would lead to financial losses for investors. I don't think the US would warrant tether as being critical to our economy to warrant them providing any sort of assistance in preventing tether from collapsing.
Furthermore One most not let our own prejudices/desires/ goals/interests impact our critical thinking. The fact is that Tether is a centralized entity and there will always be risks associated with that.
It is also pretty apparent that they have been less than transparent in the past only making their decelerations when they had absolutely no other choice or when that information had already leaked.
For instance the Link between tether and Bitfinex had always been denied and it was only after it leaked in the Panama Papers that they acknowledged that relationship.
Source :
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/paradise-papers-connection-sparks-massive-bitcoin-lawsuit/They also maintained that they had fully backed reserves on a dollar to dollar basis only recently admitting that this was not the case.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/tether-says-stablecoin-is-only-backed-74-by-cash-securitieshttps://www.coindesk.com/tether-says-its-stablecoin-is-fully-backed-again.
They say they are fully backed again but make of it what you will.
Furthermore the recent increase in total issuance from roughly 4 billion to 12 billion today at a time of wide spread economic slowdown does seem suspicious to say the least.
Again i am not debating whether tether is backed or not just that we need to acknowledge that there are some discrepancies and issues with it. And given the ongoing lawsuit by the SEC it just seems wise to maybe use another stable coin until the dust settles.