If tether was a scam then, due to legal reasons, it will take a long time to reveal.
In the mean time, exchanges are making efforts to make their system more antifragile against a drop in their USDT holding, like Bittrex somewhat switching from USDT to USD.
I also hope the general crypto-community will increase their adoption of other stablecoins. That way, any complete collapse of tether won't be too catastrophic. This is the meaning of decentralization.