With Electrum, like Blockchain.info, you have exclusive control of your private keys. You are safe.

After the fork, you must determine if Electrum does what you want. If not, then you can switch wallets.

Keep in mind that you can use your Ledger wallet with Electrum: https://ledger.groovehq.com/knowledge_base/topics/how-to-setup-electrum-nano-slash-nano-s

It's just a souvenir. A collector might buy it, but otherwise it is not worth anything.

There is no reason to direct a transaction to a miner, because every miner sees every transaction.

The miner picks which transactions to include in their next block and can use any criteria that they want. Most miners pick the most profitable transactions, but a miner that is associated with an exchange or perhaps is paid by an exchange might pick transactions going in and out of the exchange first, regardless of the fee.

However, the miner that gets to add the next block is random so there are no guarantees. In general, if you have 1% of the total hash power, then you get to decide the priority of transactions 1% of the time.

Use it to find a job.

For the same reason I keep my identity a secret, I suppose.

A telegram pump group is a scam. If you are not running the group, you are the victim, even (or perhaps, especially) if they tell you that you are part of the "inner group".

It's called pump-and-dump.

If by "as legacy input", you mean "by a legacy wallet", then no. If you are asking if a transaction can have a segwit input and a legacy output, then yes.

There is no such thing as a "segwit coin". You can send coins between segwit addresses and non-segwit addresses.

The ID a2dbdd1e-903c-4ac8-82ad-a250894b6250 is used only by GDAX. If you want to find your transaction on the blockchain, you must get the receiving bitcoin address (or transaction ID). I don't know much about GDAX, but I'm sure they have information on all of your withdrawals that will include the receiving addresses.

It depends on who wants to buy it. If everyone wants to sell and nobody wants to buy, its estimated value is 0.

These widespread predictions of much higher prices are indications of a bubble.

I can see a huge crash coming, too.

Selling an investment in a bubble is not very ethical in my opinion.

"Difficulty" is a measure of the average amount of work that must be expended in order to publish a valid block.

"Accumulated difficulty" roughly means the total amount of work expended to produce all the blocks in a chain. This is a basic mechanism of Bitcoin that is used to ensure the integrity of the block chain. One of the rules of consensus is choose the chain with the most work behind it as long as it is valid. Since the validity of competing chains in this fork is an issue, assuming that both are valid and choosing the one with the most work is a reasonable thing to do if you want to avoid the politics and taking a side, though it could cause confusion.

In a fork with no replay protection, a single transaction is valid in both branches, so if you spend the coins in one branch, then you also spend coins in the other branch. Replay protection prevents a lot of confusion, but more importantly (to some) it helps to keep the chain with the lower value coins alive.

Whether or not this (or any) fork is necessary is a matter of opinion.

"Manipulated" is an exaggeration. It implies that some person or group can control where hash power is directed. As we see with the recent BCH fork, miners tend to mine on the most profitable chain and that has resulted in huge movements of hash power between the two chains.

Hash power is an integral part of consensus because of the rule of choosing the "longest" (a.k.a most accumulated difficulty) valid chain.

There is no issue and there is no guarantee that the price will rise.

If you are worried that the price of the bitcoins will rise after you spend them, just buy more.

If you are worried that the price will fall after receiving bitcoins, just sell them.

Issue solved.

Don't buy a mining contract. They are money losers. You will be better off just buying the bitcoins.

A node is a node regardless of what machine it is running on. The important part is that it is connected and communicating with other nodes.

I remember a long time ago that rcp_user and rcp_password were used for mining, but the mining functionality has been removed. I don't know what else they might be used for.

It is a scam. Do not follow any of his instructions.

I can't tell what is going on from your description, but there is absolutely no way to earn 10% per day, especially by sending bitcoins to your own wallet. If the person is not stealing your bitcoins now, he will be trying to steal them very soon.

They are taking the most rational approach, even if it doesn't align with a certain group's politics.

Regardless of the upcoming forks, it is generally better to avoid letting others hold your bitcoins for you.

It's not clear why you write that "Xapo seems to not care to protect their customers". According to Xapo link you posted:

Also, Blockchain.info doesn't hold your bitcoins for you. They belong in a discussion about which chains the various wallets are going to follow.

It is easy to dismiss altcoins because most are ultimately worthless and have no reason to exist. While there may be a few viable altcoins out there, they are tainted by all the other crap coins.

The situation for ICOs is similar, but worse. Most of the ICOs are outright scams whose sole purpose is to enrich the promoter. The rest may be legimate attempts but the vast majority of them are doomed to fail. I doubt that more than 1% of the ICOs will succeed.

That is the reality. People bash altcoins and ICOs because it is easy.