So... can we all finally stop recommending blockchain.info as the easiest wallet?
It became obvious that problems were inevitable as soon as StrongCoin revealed the ease with which they redirected someone else's transactions. The model is compromised.
There's no way around it. All users, even new ones, need to keep the bulk of their bitcoins in cold storage. That means ON SOMETHING PHYSICAL AND INERT. Yes. Physical and inert, where it takes physical movement beyond a few keypresses to spend it. Paper. A text file burned to CD through a new OS. Whatever.
The rest would do well to be contained
within a dedicated client app, ideally on a dedicated device. With the number of high-quality clients available today, there is little reason now to do your bitcoin finances through your browser. If you need to handle large amounts of bitcoins away from home, then you should probably spend the money for a laptop or a smartphone.
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To the OP: I hate to say it, but your coins are probably beyond hope. But at least the problem might be identified and prevented from recurring.
With that in mind, several more (admittedly basic) questions:
- What is your home computer's OS? If it's Windows or Mac OS, is it a bootleg copy?
- Do you have a bitcoin client on your home computer? Are there bitcoins in its wallet that have remained untouched?
- Have you accessed your wallet on computers other than your home computer?
- How many characters was your password? Was it in English? If it was in English, was the password all letters?
- Have you imported your keys from another wallet? Have you exported the keys to other wallets?
- Do any of the addresses in your wallet come from "brainwallets" (where a passphrase of some sort was used to create the address?)
- Had you tried to send 221.84 BTC to a different address, only to find that the bitcoins went elsewhere?
Every bit of information helps.
I actually consider Trezors about equal to keeping coins offline. That's why I'm so anxious for them. Most people won't bother with the complexity of learning how to keep and manage coins in cold storage. Not only do you have to learn how to do it, but then learn how to spend those coins as well as keep the physical storage medium safe. Trezor allows convenient access to spending coins while keeping them just as safe as cold storage. The task for users is reduced down to learning to use it and managing their backup seed.
For the cost of a (plastic) Trezor, one can purchase a cheap Android smartphone, install cyanogenmod if desired, then install Mycelium. While this arrangement has flaws compared to a Trezor, it also has advantages, and it's certainly good enough to produce paper wallets, or to keep turned off as a cold storage medium for modest funds. Anyone who has a lot of bitcoins
should currently be using a paper or other cold-storage wallet, but if that's too cumbersome, at least they can go the dedicated-smartphone route rather than keep their bitcoins on a web wallet while waiting for Trezor.