Those reports that you've read are basically the same as you would read that some small, obscure bank with anonymous owners was robbed and people lost their mon

Those reports that you've read are basically the same as you would read that some small, obscure bank with anonymous owners was robbed and people lost their money. That doesn't tell you anything about the currency that was stored in this bank, but it tells you something about people that decided to put currency into it. Bitcoin as a protocol and technology proved itself to be rock-solid. People are already using it all around the worlds for many different purposes, from storing their wealth to buying subs in Subway. On the other hand, there are some Bitcoin services that are can be used to store your Bitcoin that are not exactly very secure or trustworthy. Most people advise against storing your Bitcoins in such services, as it has risks of either service operator or hackers to take your coins from their servers. Still, some people decide against these advices and still use these online wallets. You can't blame Bitcoin itself for that. There are more secure ways to store your Bitcoins, from printing your private keys on as a paper wallet and store it in a safe place where no one can reach it, to storing it on your computer, protected with a long, unique pass phase, to storing it in a web wallet like blockchain.info which doesn't store your coins directly, but encrypts the private key with your password before storing it on their servers.