about and penchant for the
outdoors had later helped turn
him into a seeker, looking for
ways to free his mind and
achieve
oneness
through
Eastern
philosophy
and
designer drugs. Ross came
from Texas, and his search
for freedom led him to some
of the thinkers on the border
between libertarian thought
and anarchism—the same
philosophers
who
had
influenced
many
of
the
Cypherpunks—and he came
to believe that the ultimate
hurdle to personal freedom
was government. At Penn
State, he had the unique
distinction of being a member
of
both
the
campus
libertarians and the West
African drumming ensemble.
He
would
describe
his
ideological
awakening
in
spiritual terms.
“Everywhere I looked I
saw the State, and the
horrible withering effects it
had on the human spirit,”
Ross would say. “It was
horribly
depressing.
Like
waking from a restless dream
to find yourself in a cage with
no way out.”
In Austin, Ross did not
tell anyone about the new
marketplace he was working
on, but he did give some
indication of what he was
after on his LinkedIn page,
where he wrote, in broad
terms, that he was “creating
an economic simulation to
give
people
a
firsthand
experience of what it would
be like to live in a world
without the systemic use of
force.”
Initially, he called the
project Underground Brokers,
but soon enough he settled on
a more enticing name: Silk
Road.
The
mushrooms
growing in the cabin were
going to be just the first
product, so something would
be available for purchase
when the site opened—and he
soon had big black trash bags
full of them.
In building Silk Road, the
drugs were the easy part. The
harder part was finding a way
to sell the drugs online,
outside the watchful gaze of
the authorities. The first
necessary
tool
he’d
discovered
was
software,
known as Tor, which allowed
people
to
obscure
their
location and identity when
surfing the Web. It also
allowed for websites to be set
up behind a similar curtain of
anonymity. While Tor had
been created by United States
Naval Intelligence, to give
dissidents and spies a way to
communicate, it was based on
ideas that had been developed
by David Chaum and other
cryptographers.
Most
Tor
websites could be visited only
by people using a Tor web
browser. The web address
that Ross posted on the
Bitcoin forum for Silk Road
—
http://tydgccykixpbu6uz.onion
—gave it away as a Tor site.
The second important tool
that Ross had discovered was
Bitcoin. With Tor alone, a
customer wanting to buy
Ross’s
mushrooms
could
have
visited
Silk
Road
without being tracked. But
assuming the customer didn’t
want to pay by sending cash
through the mail, all the other
alternatives for making digital
payments were easily tracked
—as the Cypherpunks well
knew. Ross saw that Bitcoin
solved this problem. If a
buyer paid for drugs with
Bitcoin,
the
Bitcoin
blockchain
ledger
would
record coins moving, but the
Bitcoin addresses on either
end—a series of letters and
numbers—would not include
the names of the people
involved in the transaction.
Now the only identifying
information about the buyer
was the postal address where
he or she asked to receive the
drugs. And this was easy to
game
by
providing
anonymous post office boxes.
Within the Bitcoin world,
there had been a common
assumption
that
people
looking to buy illegal or
unsavory goods were likely to
be among the first to have an
incentive to use Bitcoin. In
one early conversation about
where Bitcoin might catch on,
Satoshi had argued for online
porn, where users “either
don’t want the spouse to see
it on the bill or don’t trust
giving their number to ‘porn
guys.’”
Ross had made his first
post about Silk Road in the
middle of a long-lasting
thread on the Bitcoin forum,
entitled “A Heroin Store,”
which had been discussing
the possibility of such a
marketplace.
Martti
had
chimed in a few months
earlier, helpfully trying to
think of ways to make it
work. For him, the sticking
point was how to get both
sides of the transaction to
trust each other enough to
part with their Bitcoins and
drugs.
The fact that Ross had
figured out how to put all the
pieces together was a minor
miracle. Ross had studied
physics
in
college
and
materials science in graduate
school at Penn State. But he
was
only
an
amateur
programmer and he had to
learn the nuances of Tor and
Bitcoin software as he went
along, stumbling at many
points. His ability to pull it
off was a testament to his
work ethic and business
acumen.
In
response
to
Martti’s concern, he created
an
escrow
service—
essentially himself—to hold
the Bitcoins of a customer
until the drugs arrived in
good
condition,
so
the
customer had some recourse
if the pills or powder didn’t
show up as expected. On the
programming
front,
Ross
managed to sweet-talk an old
college friend, who was a
more
experienced
programmer, into giving him
lots of technical advice.
In addition to all this,
though, Ross’s ability to get
Silk Road up and running was
a product of his sheer
desperation at a difficult
moment in his life. Two years
earlier, Ross had abandoned
graduate
school—despite
having
already
published
several scientific papers—
because he wanted to do
bigger things with his life.
The first things he tried all
fell flat, including a used
book store he was running at
the time he put Silk Road
online. This had been one of
the first prolonged periods of
struggle in a life that had
otherwise
been
quite
charmed. Ross had movie star
looks
that
won
him
comparisons to the actor
Robert Pattinson, and he had
always had an easy time
making friends, attracting
women, having fun, and