As pointed out above yes, that's possible.
I experienced this before when I was using that old version but fortunately, I always verify and check before I download and I always used the official website to download the Electrum app on my PC.

Just read this article come from Cointelegraph, it seems the same in your case.  I highly recommend using a hardware wallet if you want to store it for a long period of time, hardware wallet has a feature that can protect itself from any malicious link.

There are too many factors to consider and might be the reason for this decline but in fact, the Bitcoin price recovered again and back to the $40k price range.  In general, the reason could be, that there are too many sellers than the buyers, the demand and supply will always matter to the Bitcoin price.

Self-destruction?
You're overthinking it and you might forget that no one control Bitcoin or the centralized organization behind it so I don't think there's self-destruction.
Believed it, this is pretty normal to the Bitcoin price that has an up and down the price movement just because of the volatile movement that makes the price fluctuate.  So, understand first the Bitcoin movement and you'll not confuse about it, in fact, we're still in a healthy market condition.

Sorry for your loss mate and I hope you've learned from this mistake and avoid that will not happen again.

Telegram is a house of scammers, never trust if there's someone PM you asking for financial advice or any that related to a financial because they are usually scammers.  I have been there before and was a victim of this kind of bogus, unfortunately, the scammer didn't succeed in his plan because I know how to verify.

You shouldn't trust random people on the internet, especially on Telegram or any kind of social media that you don't know personally.
However, despite your losses, you admit it here and warn newbies not to do the same as you did.

As said above, Bitcoin or any crypto transaction is irreversible and once it will be confirmed, there's no way to get back not unless you hold the private key where your coins transfer.  I have doubt that you might a victim of a fraud exchange and this was what I experienced before when someone PMed me on telegram.  I created an account for the unknown exchange which is the deposit address controlled by the scammer (which I doubt this is the same case).

Try to contact this service, Chainalysis.
They have a service to investigate any related to the blockchain transaction which means they can able to track high-profile cybercriminals.  I hope this will help you if that is a huge amount, but if not, just move on and learn mistakes.  Just verify it first legitimacy of an exchange.

Ask yourself first before picking an exchange that you want.
First,

• Are you willing to go KYC compliance?  then, a centralized exchange is good to go
• Is the exchange allowed in your place?

Choosing an exchange platform where to entrust our fund is quite hard to do, always prefer the legitimate exchange that supports various coins to trade.
Check always the minimum balance that they allow to withdraw because there are some exchanges that required a quite big amount before you can initiate a withdrawal.

Just watch this Youtube video "Why privacy matters" by Glenn Greenwald.
To know how important privacy is to us.

Any legal financial businesses that involve any cash flows are entitled to have KYC because this is how the government combats the possible money laundering or any criminal act that is against the law, they know their customer.
It seems there are cons and pros to using an exchange platform that required KYC and it might the only option to choose a reputable one but I can't point out which is better.  So KYC is necessary to us or are we safe on this?  The answer depends on our points of view.

If you're scared of KYC, DEXs are the best for you, but it doesn't mean you're safe in DEXs, there's still a report of scams from them.

There are some features that you didn't mention above.

• to tracked topics
• to tracked phrases
• ignored users and topic
• you will get notified once your reply gets qouted

This is very helpful, especially for those accounts that have a business here like a casino, exchange, or any company that promotes their brand name here aside from regular forum members.  

I have been using this Telegram notifier bot since it was created by the owner and it's really a great help to us, we should be thankful to @TryNinja for this.

The same Telegram bot notifier.

• [TelegramBot] Merit watcher and Mention Notification Bot created by @giammangiato
• [TELEGRAM BOT] Merit, Trust List, etc. [INFORMATION] created by @GreatArkansas

It's totally different from a withdrawal on the exchange and having a transaction fee on transferring your Bitcoin to another wallet.  Less fee for the non-custodial wallets which is you can put manually the fee rather than on the exchange wallet which is expected to have huge fees.
Just simple, those exchange platforms making ridiculous fees is a part of their business which is totally different from the non-custodial wallet.

Always check the mempool space every making such transactions to know the recent transaction fees.
It will help you to avoid your transaction being stuck and will take too long to confirm, if you are not in a hurry, 1-2 sats/vbyte is enough per transaction.

IMO, just how the market works, and in fact, as I always said, there's no infinite growth in the Bitcoin price.
I have doubt that it will not happen the repeat itself just wait for it and observe the market closely.

For now, there are a lot of predictions and speculation regarding the Bitcoin price, but no one says, Bitcoin has matured enough and it's possible that there's a market trend, it could be a small correction but not more than that.  I don't see a big percentage of drop, it's just a minor correction.

Remember that you must have always a comparison with your analysis.
I respect your choice but IMO, both are useful to me to forecast the price in the market, both TA and FA are useful to draw a conclusion and speculation but remember they are just a tool to predict the market price, we should know that we don't know how accurate they are upon making such speculation.

IMO, if you've different preferences it is easy to predict the market price.

No, this is not safe, scanning QR codes for every transaction might sometimes lead you to a scam, there are too many reports about this, scammers tricking the QR codes since codes are almost similar and design and no one will notice if you will send your Bitcoin to the scammer address.  Manual input is still good because you can manually check like checking the Bitcoin address last 3 digits and the first 3 digits.

Trezor, SafePal S1, and Ledger Nano S are the most secure wallet and I tend to agree with this.  Both have a security feature and both also have pros and cons which do you prefer to use and the cheapest among them all is the SafePal wallet.

I saw a comparison of these 3 wallets that you may look at it too.

source.

IMO, if you don't have a budget to buy a hardware wallet, still good to use an open-source software wallet, as long as your device is safe and make it sure didn't have a malware infection.

I tend to agree with this and this is also what is on my mind, OP didn't understand very well what is Bitcoin and how it will work, people love the volatile nature of Bitcoin because of this they will make money when the price goes up.

This is the problem with those newbies, they think too much about the profit in Bitcoin but yet, they don't understand how to make a profit.
However, Bitcoin doesn't have a promise to anyone to make them rich, and based on the Whitepaper, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system which means only an alternative to cash that can be used as an online payment system.

From scratch and becoming a successful trader isn't easy for a newbie (is there someone successful in trading?).  There's a lot of experience you need before you'll understand the market and there's no shortcut to it and you'll face a terrible problem when you lack knowledge and skills.  The more eager you have in yourself seeking profit could become greediness which leads to becoming a victim of scams.  So don't rush anything and don't think that you will quickly rich in trading, because once you are new to trading, don't expect too much in profit, sometimes we value our mistakes as an experience that we must avoid in the future.

I believe investing in the long-term will be the answer to your question but for sure not as quick as you want, however, there's no time frame when it will happen.

Don't do any stupid thing when there's someone sending a link through a private message on any of your social media accounts.  Verify and have DYOR always so that you can avoid these possible problems.  I used telegram and I have encountered there the same problem with the OP, I always got a private message but I never open it if there is a link sent from an unknown source.

This is very common in cloud mining which is offer you a good return, but I think people have learned and didn't fool with this which is very common back in 2017.

Yes, that's advisable to use because that's a tool to be used in trading aside from those trading analysis tools.
But my question is, do you know how to use this?  This isn't will work on its own, it needs a proper setup to gain profit and maybe it's not advisable to use if you're a newbie.

That's fair enough, 25% a month is really good and if you'll maintain that strategy it might have consistent profit.
Putting a lot of money is must your own decision if you think that it's comfortable for you, then go ahead, it's your call.

Not bad at all if you want to spend your time reading and analyzing the price chart, and using this tool for charting and proper candlestick pattern which is much better.

But if you're a long-term investor, you don't need to do this, all you have to do is set and aim for profit, once your profit were there, that is the right time to sell your crypto asset and have your profit.  I believed that long-term investment, it's stress-free.

All of these might have happened if you lack skills and strategies, it will end up guessing the market price and it seems you're doing more than gambling which is very crucial for your fund to have massive losses.  So, it's possible that traders would be expected to have losses when they don't have an idea how trading will work and what analysis should be used.  Some factors also are that at the beginning you'll experience losses because you're still in the progress stage of trading and gaining experience is a must before you will become a successful trader.

There's no guarantee of making a straight profit in trading, even how long you are in trading, you'll still experience losses, it's always crucial to deal with the market behavior.

It's already on the mainstream and speaking of masses adoption if that's what you mean, it was already achieved by the Bitcoin.
Though the conflict is the government regulation why it can't spread further and have massive adoption, because they want it to regulate Bitcoin as a related like fiat currency which is a centralized currency.  This might the missing part of Bitcoin that the reason didn't accept by other countries, it loses control because of its decentralized nature, and no one can regulate the monetary policy which could be a threat to the monetary system.

LN is the perfect way to increase the speed of every transaction in Bitcoin.
Since you aren't an expert as a developer, you might read this discussion regarding LN, The Lightning Network FAQ.

Hello, welcome to the forum.

As a newbie, you should do some research first before and educate yourself about crypto.  Heads up to this board (Beginners & Help) and you'll learn basic information regarding the Bitcoin network and other cryptocurrencies.  The same on this thread below.
[General] Bitcoin Wallets - Which, what, why?

Bitcoin has only one network but it has 3 different kinds of addresses that you may use.

• P2PKH (address starts with the number “1”)
• P2SH (address starts with the number “3”)
• Bech32 (address starts with “bc1”)

Legacy address start "1" and SegWit address supported are start with "3"(native Segwit) and "bc1"

TBH, I didn't have an experience using Bitcoin ATM upon purchasing Bitcoin, and AFAIK, this isn't made you completely anonymous upon purchasing Bitcoin so, it's not ideal to purchase using this Bitcoin ATM.  I'd rather prefer to use a DEXs than this which is clearly you can mask your identity and this is your concern, not the Bitcoin ATMs.

Though maybe someone tried it for curiosity or those new in cryptocurrency that want to purchase and didn't know about DEXs, they're maybe using these Bitcoin ATMs.  Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to try to purchase using this Bitcoin ATM because in the country where I lived, only in the capital city these things have.