actually you don't even need OP_Return if the option doesn't exist, you just have to view transactions differently. a transaction is jut a data structure with different parts that we interpret differently. for instance the first 4 bytes of a transaction is interpreted as a number which we call "version".

so in order to put "data" in a transaction you just have to find a field in your tx that allows you to enter data. in a transaction this can be the output. with OP_Return it becomes easier since it is designed for data but you can still do it with other OPs too. for instance the regular P2PKH outputs can be used (assuming OP_Return doesn't exist). you just have to change the pushed data to the value you like.

example: if you pay any amount to this address: 18L1ocUNq8EKJu1UHu92HKUk4jeXL9eXoL you are technically putting your bitcointalk username (Patatas) in the blockchain because if you look at the transaction's actual data you can see that this address is actually stored like this as an output:
76a914506174617461730000000000000000000000000088ac
or in more human readable format:
OP_DUP OP_HASH160 <Patatas(nullpaded)> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG

ps. obviously any amount sent to this address is lost because it is a burn address.

you should know that it really doesn't matter what type of wallet you choose IF you are not using them correctly or taking the necessary security precautions to protect yourself. phone wallets, PC wallets, hardware wallets, even paper wallets are unsafe if you are careless with them. of course some are safer by design but there is no 100% safe wallet. for instance if you have a clipboard hijacker you still may send coins to a wrong address (that the hijacker sets when you copy addresses) even if you use a hardware wallet.

bitcoin bull run has not yet even started. i don't consider what we had so far as a bull run. it was more like the market waking up and jumping out of its bed. also considering the fact that before all the drama in January began, price was already headed from $6500+ towards $7k+ and beyond so now that we are getting there after about 5 months we are just making up for the lost time.
that is why unlike some others i don't expect any major drops but also i don't expect to see a big rise to shoot above $10k either. a slower rise is more likely in my opinion.

this is what happens when a country accepts bitcoin as a currency (in case you have forgotten, in 2017 Japanese government passed a law recognizing bitcoin as a legal way of payment which was a big part of the reason for rise to $20k).
there are lots of businesses that are accepting bitcoin payment in Japan, specially since there are 0 taxes on bitcoin payments. using Lightning Network was bound to happen on larger scale over in Japan too because of their views (seeing bitcoin as a currency not just an investment).

as others have already mentioned your numbers are way off the mark specially when it comes to fees, but the topic about "efficiency of transferring 'money' oversees using bitcoin" is a valid discussion. i have actually raised this question a couple of years ago.
the thing is, in the end it depends on the methods you are comparing with for transferring "money" oversees using different methods. there will always be fees when multiple conversions and transfers are involved no matter what method you use. so  the sum of these fees depends on individual cases which comes down to the methods that both parties have access to.
for example i may be earning bitcoin and want to send it abroad so i skip one conversion. or i may be receiving bitcoin and having access to a cheap way of converting it to local currency. and on the other hand the other methods of fiat transfer that i have access to may cost a lot more fees because they calculate everything percentage-wise.

a correction is from $9100 to $8500-$8100 or a correction would be from the current $8500 to $7800-$7500 but a fall from the current price to $6000 is a big ass crash not a correction so it needs a big ass reason.

as for the current trend, i see corrections all over it which leads me to believe there is no major corrections coming. additionally in my view there hasn't been any major "corrections" as some people expected, because this is not exactly a bull run! instead this rise itself is a correction of sorts. i would call it a "reverse correction"^TM as we were in a "reverse bubble"^TM and it needed to "reverse burst"... and here we are now after that reverse correction.

anything could happen but to see such a giant drop of $2000+ (25%) for no reason while we are on the rise and the overall market attitude is bullish doesn't seem likely to me at all. and you can not call such drops as a "correction" because correction is what we had 3 days ago and they are smaller and only happen after a rise. what you are describing is a market crash, a small crash but still a crash.

i can't really speak about the gold market and i don't think it is a fair comparison since the gold market is not going to grow, it is what it is. while bitcoin market will continue to grow for years to come.

these are interesting points and i don't deny the facts about manipulation, its existence and control of the price. what i can never accept is the extent of that control. as i said the manipulation can not be sustained.

those "3 people" are the most persistent ones or probably the newly scammed people. otherwise we said it 1.5 years ago are aren't willing to waste any more time repeating it.
majority of active traders left Bittrex because of it and that is why their rank dropped from #1 down to #100+ in 2017 and Binance grow overnight!
also the starter of the topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=96390 what more do you want?

i think your terminology needs a little bit of improvement.
first of all it is best to call these "web wallets" instead of "online wallets" because an online wallet can refer to a hot wallet on your desktop that is connected to the internet (is online) but a web wallet is a  wallet on the web!
additionally Coinbase and XAPO (in my opinion) should not even be categorized as a wallet because they are accounts since they control your private keys and your money and only give you an account in their database. i am not familiar with Freewallet and btc.com wallet.

so my choice is blockchain.com first because it is a web wallet not a web account so it can answer your question and second because of all the bugs it had in the past and it still has including bugs with their fee estimation down to security bugs such as usage of a bad random engine that has led to fund losses.

try to focus on your security and how to use bitcoin properly, your backup,... these additional options aren't really game changers. for instance this particular option may only affect you if you are spending bitcoin regularly and receiving regularly so that you may see an input that is not yet confirmed and you want to spend or not spend that particular one so you use this option. otherwise for regular users who rarely spend bitcoin this option may never be useful.

apart from what @TryNinja said, you can try by actually sending a small amount to your wallet and then spending it. something like $1 would work, you won't lose any money if something were wrong and at the same time you become more familiar with the wallet and usage of bitcoin in general.

instead of focusing on preventing the hacker from spending the funds he stole and wanting to add restrictive conditions to bitcoin and ruin it, you should focus on how you can prevent the hack from happening in first place, which is a much easier task!

not to mention that 90% of exchange hacks are either inside job or a shady story that the exchange feeds its customer just to scam them out of their money.

anybody who says this and believes in that, has not understood what decentralized cryptocurrency means. bitcoin doesn't need saving, and AML KYC is not going to solve anything in the altcoin shitshow market either.
as for bitcoin it will continue operating and be adopted more and more even without government intervention. because that is exactly what bitcoin is designed to do and that is the main reason why it was  created in first place.
as for altcoins, the scams will continue to happen, the shitcoins will continue to be created and the fund raising shenanigans will repeat with different names such as IEO, GSIO (government sanctioned initial offering) while scamming people all the same.
the only thing AML does is help government have more information what people do with their money and also tax them on it. nothing else.

do you have any reliable source for this?
so far the only reliable thing i have read is that Indian Reserve bank has prohibited usage of their services to buy/sell bitcoin. and RBI is not the government so what they do or don't do has nothing to do with government's ban of bitcoin.

but that would cost a ton of money and can not be sustained over the long term since the market is also growing constantly and as a result it is becoming harder and harder to manipulate the price. for example it takes a lot more money today to manipulate it compared to the money it took back in 2011 and it will continue to grow.
basically i think the cost does not justify the result they could get out of it.

the word "crypto" doesn't mean "bitcoin"! the real meaning of it is a short form for "cryptography" and is sometimes around bitcoin forums used as short form for "cryptocurrency" but what you are using it for is as "bitcoin" which is false!

you should also stop thinking of bitcoin as a cash cow that only rises to give people profit! that is not what bitcoin was created for.

you can use Blockchair.com explorer to export almost everything as long as the number of cells is less than 1 million, otherwise it may cost you.
visit: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?s=time(asc)&q=time(..2013-12-31)# i've already set the date for you but the rest of the options won't register in the url so at the bottom of the page deselect every other option you don't want such as total output, output count,... and only have hash and  time options selected. now you should see 60432140 cells. either reduce the time to get 1 million and export manually or contact them and see if the payment works for you and get the data that way.

this is not new! it has been happening ever since first exchange opened up. and for the past couple of years we have at least half a dozen major exchange hacks some of which lead to that exchange closing down.

the two aren't related. centralized services can do whatever they want. the usage of "blockchain" will remain the same whether or not exchange are safe.

that would introduce restrictions at protocol level and will cause more damage to the whole system rather than helping anything. this is also on the end of nullifying the censorship resistance attribute of bitcoin. not to mention that what you call "verification" is impossible because the verification is the signatures that exist in each transaction which indicate the spender owns the keys, any other additional "verification" would require the same cryptography technique and keys which can also be stolen the same way the first one was stolen/hacked.

there is no such thing as "blockchain wallet". and the site is not giving us any reference on where they "stole" this data from but by checking the blockchain.info statistics (https://www.blockchain.com/charts/my-wallet-n-users) they are stealing it from there without giving them credit. and it is WRONG because it does NOT show the growth or usage of bitcoin at all, it is just showing us a centralized service's stats which may not even be all correct.

and by the way the definition of "wallet" posted in this site is one of the worst things i have ever read.

history is repeating itself but you are looking at the wrong part of the history and expect that wrong part to be repeated.
right now we are in Jan 2015 or 2012 part of the history where the price has just come out of the long bear market and is starting to rise slowly towards the big rally (the initial big rise which was fast too, was because of the artificial state of the low $3k level we were in).
so if history were to repeat we should continue seeing this slow rise not a big rally in June or any months after that.