A safe place to store and trade with BTC is in bitBTC, which earns interest. You can use
http://metaexchange.info as an instant bridge. Keeping it on the BitShares decentralised exchange as bitBTC is the future. People can trade bitBTC against bitUSD without the hacking risk that comes with centralised services while getting exposure to the same market.
I hope these bter thieves are caught and the money returned. Theft sucks.
Nothing is safter than a cold wallet or hardware wallet for storing BTC and a personal full bitcoin wallet with multisig is probably be more secure than bitBTC.
But you can't trade BTC against USD or anything at all from the relative safety of a personal bitcoin wallet (yet), but you trade against the USD with bitBTC, because the exchange is in the wallet. bitBTC can be traded against bitUSD, bitGOLD, bitSILVER, etc. So for people who want to get exposure to the BTC/USD market, the bitBTC/bitUSD market is the most secure way to trade.
What is everyone waiting for? The solution to all these horrible bitcoin heists exists! Lets use it!
If you change your mind you can always trade the bitBTC back to bitcoin by going bitBTC-BTS-BTC.
