Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency everyone is talking about, has seen spectacular price rises in recent months, with huge numbers of people keen to make a quick buck off the back of its soaring value.

Google queries for "buy bitcoin" surged passed "buy gold" when the currency's price shot from less than $1,000 (£742) at the start of 2017 to almost $20,000 in December.

But armchair and professional investors have been shaken by sudden drops in the currency's value which began just before Christmas. It now stands at about $8000.

Few can predict with any certainty where Bitcoin will go from here and many believe we're coming to the end of a bubble - but one thing's certain: if you'd invested five years ago you'd be doing very well for yourself now.

There are two main ways to get hold of Bitcoin - buying an expensive supercomputer (with a whopping electricity bill to match), and using it to "mine" bitcoins, the process of solving the cryptographic codes that keep the entire network running.

This isn't a realistic scenario for most people, so the alternative is to buy. Buying bitcoins used to be a complicated affair - long waits, massive fees and foreign websites. Now there are a number of consumer-friendly websites for buying and selling not only bitcoin, but ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.