The northern China city of Tianjin was the scene of a police raid Wednesday in which police seized 600 computers that were being used to mine Bitcoin, along with eight high-power fans.

Local power grid operators reported unusual activity and spiking electrical usage in the area, leading police to the location, where they also arrested at least five people in connection with the investigation.

They are calling the alleged crime “power theft,” as the bitcoin miners apparently avoided paying for electricity by bypassing the meter.

Crypto mining is on the wane in China following last year's crackdown on operations by the central government, forcing miners to move operations offshore or to shut down altogether.

Today (Tuesday) morning, Eastern Time, hackers successfully hijacked two Google DNS servers, diverting users from the popular MyEtherWallet web app to a spoof website designed to steal user's transactions. DNS servers are responsible for mapping between web domains (e.g. www.google.com) and actual server addresses (e.g. 172.217.5.100).

The only difference between the spoof MyEtherWallet website and the real website was an invalid security certificate on the fake MyEtherWallet, and many users clicked on and proceeded to send Ether using the fake web app. In total, at least $150K of Ether was sent to the hacker's wallet.

The method of the attack is still unknown. Users should learn to always verify the certificate of sensitive websites online, and to use hardware wallets with cryptocurrency when possible.

Bill Harris, the founding CEO of Paypal and Intuit says, ‘I’ll say it: Bitcoin is a scam.’ This isn't the first time something negative has been said about Cryptocurrencies by someone from Paypal.

Bitcoin has had a decent stretch, recently just breaking through the $9,000 price level on Tuesday. Bitcoin has created a path for the Cryptocurrency market to see a $100 billion rise in market cap since last week.

In a piece for Recode.net Bill was asked about his view on Bitcoin and he replied:

‘It’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen... the losers are ill-informed buyers caught up in the spiral of greed. The result is a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary families to internet promoters.’

He goes on further to say that “Cryptocurrency is best-suited for one use: Criminal activity.”

Martin Lewis, financial journalist and MoneySavingExpert.com founder, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook through the United Kingdom’s High Court, claiming that the platform issued cryptocurrency ads that used his name and likeness.

As Lewis explained in a statement on his website, the ads would link to fake news articles that resembled news outlets like the BBC. Lewis added that he had been trying to report the ads for around a year before going forward with the lawsuit, adding that while some ads were taken down by the platform, new ones would appear shortly afterwards.

Facebook notably banned cryptocurrency-related ads back in January, although it is currently unclear if that will have any bearing on the lawsuit.

Indian spiritual guru Asumal Harpalani has been found guilt of raping a 16-year-old girl in 2013. He was accused of raping his follower's daughter in a supposed 'curing' ritual. His punishment is expected to be a life sentence which will be announced later in today.

Asumal Harpalani is highly revered in India with millions of followers worldwide. Security has been beefed in case of violent reactions from his supporters, similar to last year's, after another guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim was sentenced for the same crime.

It is expected that he will appeal the judgement in a higher court. Whatever the outcome, he still has another rape case in Gujarat for raping a woman between 2002 and 2004.

According to a new survey published Tuesday by Thomson Reuters, 20 percent of financial institutions are considering trading cryptocurrencies within the next year.

Respondents that said they were willing to trade bitcoin – the best-known cryptocurrency – said they planned to begin trading in the next three to six months.

The survey queried over 400 clients of the Thomson Reuters Corp., including large asset managers, hedge funds and trading desks at the biggest banks.

The survey is just the latest evidence that interest in cryptocurrency investment has not waned despite the dramatic decline in the price of bitcoin from its high of over $19,000 in December down to its current price of under $10,000 today.

After topping at near $20,000 in mid-December, the world's leading cryptocurrency by market cap has been in nothing but freefall ever since. But over the last week, Bitcoin has moved closer to $10,000, cracking $9,000 in mid-morning trading on Tuesday. What's happening with this crazy coin now? The quick answer: big investors and tech upgrades.

"Bitcoin is trading upwards for a number of reasons," says Fran Strajnar, CEO of Brave New Coin, a data and research company focused on the blockchain and cryptographic assets market. Strajnar thinks the fundamentals of Bitcoin have improved. Recent improvements to its lightning network and outside forces from regulators are both bringing investors back. "The U.S. is stepping in to regulate security tokens instead of commodity assets (utility) and we are seeing major value investors stepping into buy as a result," he says.

In November 2017, an unknown person discovered a bug in the Parity multi-signature Ethereum wallet contract and sent a kill order to the Polkadot ICO wallet, rendering 306,000 Ether (then worth $150M) unrecoverable. The same "hacker" killed additional Parity wallets, together holding more than 200,000 Ether.

The lost Ethereum is currently worth $330M and Parity developers are pushing for Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 999, which would hard fork the Ethereum network and allow owners of killed contracts to recover their Ether.

The proposal is dividing the Ethereum community, with some seeing the fund recovery as common sense, while others view it as a threat to the network's integrity and immutability.

A poll of Ethereum holders, together holding 3.8M Ether (3.8% of the total supply) shows 56.7% against the fund recovery, with 37.4% in favor of it. The polling will end in 10 hours.