Are there known bugs in the current Multibit version?
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22gt4r/major_mulitibit_bug_btc_gone_it_cost_me_all_of_my/Responses from MultiBit developer:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22gt4r/major_mulitibit_bug_btc_gone_it_cost_me_all_of_my/cgn38cvIn the life of MultiBit (i.e from 2011) there's probably a handful of cases like these. If there is damage to the private key bytes (for whatever reason) and there is no other copy available/ backed up then you've lost access to the bitcoins.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22gt4r/major_mulitibit_bug_btc_gone_it_cost_me_all_of_my/cgn1b7h- snip -
Generally in life if someone says they are 'too busy' to help it either means:
A) There are brushing you off.
or
B) They actually ARE too busy.
Let me explain why B) is the case here.
Since October 2013 Gary Rowe and I have been working on the next version of MultiBit (MultiBit HD). It has a lot of improvements. Critically for this thread it has deterministic wallets which makes private key regeneration possible and reduces significantly the chance of private key loss. In addition it has rolling backups, local backups and cloud backups.
It's a big job and it's probably still a month from being in beta. I work on it every day. I mean EVERY day. I cannot remember the last day I had a completely free day (except for last Christmas).
You can only do so much so there are a whole stack of things in my personal life that are on hold to get MBHD out the door.
To give one example: My electricity is run from solar/ diesel, running through a battery store. The batteries are old and need replacing. (This is normal - they only last 1000 recharges or so).
So I need to replace them - this will take a few days to take out the couple hundred kilos of batteries, replace them, wire them up, dispose of them etc.
This job is on hold until MBHD is out. So my power envelope in the evening is about 6 watts. I can have a couple of 3W LED lights on. That's it.
Getting MBHD out the door will help improve the security of a lot (hundreds of thousands) of people's private keys so I don't mind making a 'short term' sacrifice. By short term I mean six months.
- snip -