Bitcoin's mining difficulty just had its biggest increase since early 2018

Bitcoin's mining difficulty — a metric for the ease by which miners can create new transaction blocks on the network – increased by nearly 15% on Tuesday. The jump represents the biggest upwards move of its kind since January 2018. 

The change happened on block height 635,040, with the network adjusting its difficulty level to 15.78 trillion, according to data from BTC.com. 

Tuesday's upwards difficulty change comes two months after one of Bitcoin's largest difficulty drops in its history. On March 26, the network difficulty adjusted downwards by nearly 16%.