Bitcoin has been on a surge, although its value did skid Thursday morning, plunging $2,000 in less than 24 hours after the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase experienced a Wednesday outage.

On Sunday, the digital currency soared above $11,000 for the first time in 15 months, climbing to $13,485.85. That's its highest price since January 2018 before a big crash in November 2018 wiped out 70% of its value and dropped the price below $4,000.

Bitcoin is highly volatile, as those figures show, and is still off its highs of about $20,000 reached in late 2017.

It's easy to buy bitcoin if you want to see what owning it is like. And if the price sounds too steep, you don't need to buy an entire bitcoin just to participate in the market. You can purchase just a small fraction of one bitcoin.

This is not an endorsement to own bitcoin, and you should talk to a financial adviser if you want to make a big investment, but if you decide to participate in conversations about it or just want to understand a little more about how buying bitcoin works, check out the guide below.

Coinbase is one of the most popular options for buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, so we'll start there.