Well the mining is a big part of decentralization that's why I mentioned it.

Theoretically, if all developers and maintainers colluded, sure, they could. But how likely is that? And isn't that the point of open source/FOSS? Transparency/verifiability/many eyes on the project being it's defense?

What would happen with something so egregious and nefarious is it would be forked by the community. Just like Monero was forked away from shady dealings of Bitmonero in it's infancy.

If you are still not convinced, don't hodl Monero, just use it. Continue saving with Bitcoin. Best of both worlds.