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For some time, Mr. Durov and a few dozen staffers had no fixed headquarters, but rather traveled the world, setting up shop in one city after another, he told the Journal in 2016. The company now has its operational base in Dubai, though it says it doesn’t keep servers there.Mr. Durov maintains a yearslong friendship from his VK days with actor and tech investor Jared Leto, with whom he shares an ascetic lifestyle that eschews meat and alcohol.

How Does Bitcoin Work?

Bitcoin is built on a distributed digital record called a blockchain. As the name implies, blockchain is a linked body of data, made up of units called blocks that contain information about each and every transaction, including date and time, total value, buyer and seller, and a unique identifying code for each exchange. Entries are strung together in chronological order, creating a digital chain of blocks. “Once a block is added to the blockchain, it becomes accessible to anyone who wishes to view it, acting as a public ledger of cryptocurrency transactions,” says Stacey Harris, consultant for Pelicoin, a network of cryptocurrency ATMs. Blockchain is decentralized, which means it’s not controlled by any one organization. “It’s like a Google Doc that anyone can work on,” says Buchi Okoro, CEO and co-founder of African cryptocurrency exchange Quidax. “Nobody owns it, but anyone who has a link can contribute to it. And as different people update it, your copy also gets updated.”