Electrum doesn't release beta versions or pre-release or anything like that. everything they release (as a new version and a compiled binary) is the final and newest tested version ready to be used.
also usually versions that are not final like the release candidates,... have a different versioning system, they won't be called something like 3.3.8 instead it would be something like 3.3.8-rc1 but as i said Electrum doesn't do this.

there is already another topic discussing this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5189037.0
and the story is suspicious at best which makes it look more like an FUD not to mention that there is no noticeable change in the hashrate!

this particular FOMO that you are talking about (due to block reward halving) is so far away since the event itself is about 7-8 months from now. before then we might see other FOMOs in the market. for example this current price drop has pushed a lot of the weaker hands out of the market, they will come back as soon as the reversal begins and price gets closer to $9k and we easily could see a shoot up back to above $11k when that happens.
the halving FOMO is mostly a hype that occurs about 1 month before the halving and it leads to a big rally not a recovery.

bitcoin is mostly unpredictable and there are certain movements in the market which you can never predict even if you suspect they might have a tiny chance of happening. for example the recent drop of this size was completely unexpected. there simply was no reason for such a big drop to take place. and no amount of TA could show that to you.

what you are referring to is sometimes referred to as proof of burn and it is the least common way of using OP_Return output script types. the fact is the primary usage of this type of PublicScript is still to insert arbitrary data in the immutable bitcoin blockchain mostly used by altcoin miners who are doing some sort of merge mining (the data being their block hash) or altcoins such as those of Omni layer sending transactions that way.

in case you didn't notice it is talking about  a flawed altcoin which has nothing to do with bitcoin and the problem is with the lack of thought put into that altcoin.
the problem is that addresses don't have any kind of checksum or failsafe technique to help users avoid mistakes. in ethereum since addresses are encoded using base-16 or hexadecimal format, if you change 1 character to anything else the address is still valid and you can lose your money.

but in bitcoin addresses are encoded using special encodings that prevent such trivial and primitive mistakes. base58 and the newer and better bech32 are the encoding techniques. if you change 1 character or even more of them, the address will become invalid. so there is no way you could lose bitcoin by sending it to a wrong address unless you intentionally copy another address by mistake and there is no solution for that.

the thing about buying dips is that those people who always buy the dips are already buying the dip and enjoying the discount that the market offered them at this time and out of nowhere! and those who never are not going to change their mind with a topic like this. these people always panic buy later one when the price already went up. like the $3k range, when they were saying they should wait for $1k to buy and $3k-$4k is way too high! then they panic bought at $6k instead!!!

for thousands of years (yes, even before computers) we have been coming up with newer and stronger cryptographic schemes to make it stronger as efficient ways were found to break the older ones. this is not going to stop here either, it will be a constant battle of strengthening cryptography while technology improves.
so what does it mean for bitcoin? nothing really! like everything else bitcoin has to also upgrade its cryptography at some point to be ahead of the technology.

for the time being it seems like the market is deep in panic mode and people aren't really willing to go any other way. which is why we have not yet seen the recovery start. and surprise surprise it is the same exact thing we had earlier this year when people were filled with dread when price was struggling behind $4k barrier. their reaction right afterwards was more surprising when they panic bought bitcoin to shoot the price above $6k and then reach $13k in a short time.
i'm afraid we are in for another repetition.

having more cores only help with algorithms that could be run in parallel. for that, each round has to be independent of others. but here, AES is being used and the CBC mode makes it serial, meaning each block needs to use the previous encrypted block so you can't run it in parallel.

with that said AES algorithm is quite fast itself specially if the implementation uses the CPU intrinsics that exist in majority of CPUs (specially Intel) there is no need for parallelism even if it were possible. 

everything has hype and all those other technologies do too but unfortunately among them, blockchain technology has been mostly hype and so little "actual technology"! so far we have seen a lot of attention being paid to this technology but 90% of this attention goes into how to create wealth for the creators of such projects instead of going into innovation and problem solving or to return some product that could be used in real world.

take this recent hype with Facebook. they are using blockchain technology and creating a new token but there is nothing new about it. it is the same technology being used under a different name and in a centralized way. so what is the product? only filling the pockets of this company with more money and increasing their control!

these numbers are not absolute. it depends on 3 things: (1) amount being transferred (2) state of the network and (3) your method of accessing the blockchain.
you already talked about (1) but not the other.
2) state of the network means if there was some sort of issue, reorg, fork,... that needed extra attention. during these times the number of confirmation required to be safer increases depending on the issue. it can even go up to 100.
3) this basically means whether you are using a full node or a light client. if for example you are using an SPV wallet then you should wait for higher number of confirmation under all circumstances which will grow more if there was an issue.

right now the panic is the dominant force in the market and that is pushing the price down until it reaches a point where the panic sellers no longer have any coins to sell so we can reverse back up and jump above $10k.
but one thing about this mode is that there is no way we can predict when it is going to end so we don't know how low it can go.

it is all about the percentage-wise size of any movement not the absolute size. from $501 to $297 is a 40% drop so it can not be considered "normal" really even in bitcoin market. so if you wanted to compare it to this month's drop it is half that size.
in any case i don't think we can make this kind of comparison on small levels. we can compare them with a bigger perspective meaning expecting the big hyped up rise 1-2 months prior to the halving, a mini bubble by the time of halving, its burst right on halving and slow rise 1 month after it.

they most probably will. but the problem is that these types of directories are corrupted easily as fast and end up receiving bribes to list shady things as legit/verified ones.

every transaction has different parts, version, input list which include previous transaction hash, signature..., output list,... if we simplify it to something like this:
in legacy transactions, this is the structure and the entire thing is used for calculating the size and paying the fee based on that.
when you use SegWit this structure changes a little
and the size is calculated by using everything except the signature so you'll end up with a smaller size and pay a smaller fee in total.

of course the more correct thing to say is that we are no longer using "size" we are using "virtual size" which is 1/4 of the tx weight which is calculated by using 3x base size (without witness) + total size (with witness)

i have not tested this command but try using this:

replace "rawtxhex" with your raw transaction hex,
"privatekey1" and 2 are the keys to sign the transaction (if it didn't work try using 1 key at a time and do the whole thing twice but the second time use the result from previous step)
"id" is the txid you are spending
n is the index i explained above
pubScrHex is your P2SH script (your address converted to its script form)
redeemhex is your redeem script

ref: https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.18.0/rpc/rawtransactions/signrawtransactionwithkey/

it is not "many" it is all of them. 99% of the altcoins are also using the same asymmetric cryptography as bitcoin does usually on the same curve or a different one. there are some using RSA which is even weaker. i heard about one using a quantum resistance algorithm but i never saw the coin itself (hence the 1% i left out).

one thing about breaking elliptic curves is to find a way to solve the problem faster not to increase the speed of calculation. quantum computers at best are increasing the calculation speed not the mathematical solution which is still extremely time consuming.

a better term to describe that number is "depth" instead of number of confirmation. it says it all, when you see a tx that has 30k confirmation, it means it is 30k blocks deep from the head. so if for example the head is at block height 10 and your tx is in that block, your confirmation is 1 meaning it is 1 block deep. when there are more blocks found and we reach block 15, your tx has 5 confirmation and it means it is 5 blocks deep.

what is the most number of confirmation? it is equal to number of blocks we have at that time (plus 1*).
last block's height: 597211†
tx with highest number of confirmation (597212†): https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b

* the reason for +1 is because the very first transaction is the genesis block's coinbase tx which is in block #0
† these numbers could be different by the time you look at them since the blockchain is constantly growing.

of course we can. it is easy, we sacrifice the decentralization and security of bitcoin and become centralized like XRP and then it is easy to have fast insecure transactions that the centralized power who would control the chain by then could take away from you at any time if they wished to.