This was also my question when I saw a new ICO (it was a good one, not like the other hundreds). The developer announced bounty programs, but the use of telegram was mandatory, so I just let them go...
I know it's easy and straightforward, but there are a lot of other possible apps that doesn't record the phone nr. and other data... Using telegram is fancy at the moment

You should have at least two wallets, one on your phone, it can be a web wallet and you should use it as your everyday physical wallet (I mean that you should only keep a little amount in that). It's easier to use and easier to handle.
You should have a second wallet, where you store your coin(s), that should be an offline wallet (paper wallet, hardware wallet, etc). It's like a safe box at home or a bank's trezor box, you can keep larger sums in it, but you don't use it frequently, so it's unnecessary to put it on your phone (and it's not safe anyway).
There are a lot of different wallets, read a bit and you'll find the one that fits your requirements.

[Sarcasm on]
It would be far more easy to write a program and start to spread like:
"We have the database of compromised private keys, you can check in a second if yours is included or not" And the program would just easily gather the private keys... [sarcasm off]
I bet a lot of people would fall for this, despite of most of the bitcoiners are more or less know that they can't reveal their private key in any circumstances... Sad but true...

According to the communication in connection with the Trezor Model T, they are planning to add several new cryptocurrencies. They also state that they have rewrite the whole code and the whole software will be much better and shiny and new etc If only the support for the new cryptocurrencies is true it's enough for me...

And you can preorder the 3rd batch of Trezor Model T (1st batch with price $119 is sold out, as well as 2nd batch $129, now the 3rd batch is on sale for $139 and the next batches will be more expensive. Expected shipping date is early 2018, maybe Januar. Model T has color touch screen, better software, etc...
Interesting thing is that they were already talking about Trezor 2 this summer and now they're offering a brand new device for pre-order... Product development timeframes are shortening...

I have also read about their own national digital currency (maybe not crypto, just a digital currency). In this case, it's an understandable step to ban the competitors (cryptocurrencies). If they ban (or just regulate) bitcoin, the average Joes won't choose bitcoin instead of the government's digital currency.
India already has a digital payment system (Tez by Google) and maybe the goverment has seen it's advantages and now they want their own system (because they need to control it if they want to influence their own economy directly).

It took some time but it's done. You can't expect the confirmation in 1 hour time if you give small fee. Accelerators are great things (if they really work), but you can't rely on them. Eg. ViaBtc give you chance every full hour, and just for a few seconds time, because a lot of people are waiting for a free acceleration instead of offering a little bit higher fee.

Also, if you have any bitcoin related websites in your own language (if it's not the english), maybe it would be the easiest start, and after some time you can start to read this forum as well (or parallel). The beginner section is really useful and not only that section. If you use the 'Search' function (or google for something) you will surely find all the information you need, because all the newbies are always asking really similar questions, so you'll find at least two-three threads for your question in no time.

Fintech (or insurtech) idea that you use your insurance company's app (that stores the pictures in a blockchain type database) to take some pictures of your car if a falling tree hits it because of the heavy wind (pictures contain GPS and time data in EXIF). Pictures are hashed and the blockchain grows, but there's no modification possible after. The insurance company can be sure that you (or you can be sure that the insurance company) cannot modify the pictures later, so they can calculate an amount to pay you based on those pictures (and they can cut the costs if they don't need to send out their staff to take those pictures of your car).

Amazon was only the logistics part of the business, and bitcoin is the payment part. The logistic chain is always longer than the payment one, so when Amazon helped to reduce the long chain from the factory to the customer, it was a huge result. To achieve such a huge result is simply not possible, because in the payment chain there's usually only one third party, the bank, while in the logistic chain there are several 3rd parties.

Well, most of the bitcoiners are happy if the price goes up, but surely there are some bitcoiners who care about bitcoin safety and have a clue about how it works. To think it a bit further, if nobody cares about bitcoin safety, and have no idea how it works really, it's possible that you can earn a lot on price increase but later on someone will steal your coins and nobody will understand how it was possible...

You should not worry, people won't stop minig, because they have invested in miner equipment which is really expensive, so they need the income. The question is what coin they will mine, but we will have more information about it only after the coming forks. Those people who haven't bought expensive equipment for mining, they have already left more or less the bitcoin chain and are mining mostly alts, so it doesn't matter for bitcoin. We need to hold on, survive the forks, and we'll see...

This message is a kind of everyday message if we talk about banks, they send out mails that there's an ongoing phishing attack, be prepared, etc... Usually, they include it on the login form of the internet bank site too.
This is needed, because most of the people are not technically prepared to spot a phishing mail, message or something similar, but if they were warned, it's more easy to realize.
XAPO has only sent out a normal warning message, but as it was above mentioned correctly, it can be easily misinterpreted in a stressful situtaiton...

Thanks for that, I've checked the instruction of etching. It's really straight forward, I'm planning to try it out sometime.
What I would change is:
For me, it looks easier to just put my seed on the steel card, because I can easily import it into any kind of wallet in a few minutes. In this case, if someone finds the card with some words on it, it won't be easy to determine if it's a seed, and for which kind of cryto and what kind of wallet it is useable for.
Also, if I etch the seed into two cards (half of the seed to the first card, second part of the seed to the second card), I can place them to different offsite locations. In this case I don't need to worry if someone finds the card, because the other part is far away. Just to be a bit too cautious

Next time you can try accelerators, like the above mentioned ViaBTC.
https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/
You can try to include your transaction into the accelerated ones every full hour, in the first few seconds. If it doesn't let you accelerate, never mind, try next full hour.

Somebody have mentioned web wallets here to store the coins on at the time of the hard fork. Last time in August (OK, not last time, because since then the BTG fork has also happened) I have forgotten about a little bit of dust BTC in my Xapo web wallet. In the beginning of October or late September I have received a mail from XAPO that my BCH coins are ready to use, so it took them a while but they have managed to implement the new alt into their system. So web wallets could be OK, but the best is when you have your private key.

Do you mean something similar?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1000mW-Adjustable-Focal-Laser-Tube-Wood-Kits-for-NEJE-DK-8-KZ-Engraver/263236760459?hash=item3d4a22338b:g:xQUAAOSwFYxZzopa
I was searching thru ebay for laser etching, but only $500+ machines were listed, so now I'm searching for laser engraving tool, and this was something similar that you probably mentioned.

To be a bit more realistic, the 'lot of users and traders' are just a really low percentage (or less) of the people... Bitcoin needs to reach the mass adoption, in order to gain enough trust and stabilize the growth of the price (to get the price less volatile, smaller dumps and also smaller drops in the uptrend). But until then we'll have higher pumps and huge dumps as well.

He does not need to spend any time in front of the computer I guess, because he has all the advisory staff that can search for something that they don't already know. He does not need to change his way of thinking about bitcoin because it doesn't matter to him. He has already reached a such high standard of living that he doesn't need to search for some investment that's unfamiliar to him. If he's negative about bitcoin it's only bad for us, not for him. What bitcoin needs is time and mass adoption yet.

Was thinking about similar, already mentioned on the forum, but it's a bit different.
I was using the same kind of metal business card, but I would like to engrave the letters into it with a hand engraver tool. My initial thought was to punch in the letters like a dog tag, but there's not enough place to punch all the letters, because of the blending of the material, you can't condense the characters enough to fit. So I have already ordered the metal cards off from ebay, now I'm searching for a proper hand engraver.