My mistake I used poor wording. You are correct, my point is the only real market in bitcoin is the silkroad and they use blockchain price which happens to reflect bitstamp price for now it was mt gox.
So the only real market place with any volume at all uses blockchain.info's price. It is the face of bitcoin.
"transact out in the open" transparent as in with your real world identity associated with it.
"There are also many "feedback mechanisms"" I should be able to rate an address. If people could rate addresses then when some one stole you would know it.
I had a guy a couple weeks ago steal on otc and sell to me here. I do not like buying stolen coins.
I wouldn't say poor, more like confusing. You keep saying market, which most people would assume to mean a bitcoin exchange (see:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/). However you seem to be using the word to refer to "markets" that accept bitcoin, of which you are correct in that SilkRoad is probably the largest in terms of volume. However Bitmit is also quite large, and they offer several price options for a seller to use when listing items in USD: Bitstamp, Mt.Gox (24-hr and last), and something they call bitcoinaverage which I assume to be a composite figure.
Furthermore, Blockchain.info seems to use the Mt.Gox weighted average, so saying that SilkRoad uses the Blockchain.info price, which in turn uses the Mt.Gox weighted average is a misrepresentation of the facts, even if for some reason SilkRoad actually retrieves their price from the Blockchain.info site.
Bottom line is, you're giving Blockchain.info far too much credit, and by extension too much culpability.
I've never had any dealings with you before, but from what I can tell you seem to be a valued member of the bitcoin community (or at least the bitcointalk.com community), and provide a beneficial service. I realize such a loss can be greatly discouraging, but don't let it drive you away from bitcoin as a whole. From what you have learned if this thread you should be able to prevent this from happening again if you decided to stick with it.
As for the list you posted, all of those items look disconcerting, with the exception of
maybe the Ask Toolbar.
A virus scan may help clean up your computer, but no anti-virus software is perfect, and in the end it will be up to your to educate and protect yourself from malicious software, or as someone else suggested relegate different tasks to different devices. From personal experience I can tell you: knowledge is power. I haven't used anti-virus software regularly for the past decade; I download something every so often to scan my computer, but always end up not finding anything. When people ask me what anti-virus software I use, I laugh and say, "I don't download viruses."