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When he wasn’t watching the show, Ross was now tinkering with his new idea in their Austin
bedroom: an anonymous Web site where you could buy or sell anything imaginable.
The genesis of this concept had been lodged in Ross’s mind for some time. Just another one of
the daydreams he hoped to build in the future. The only problem was, when he had first had this
particular aha moment a year earlier, the technology he needed to realize it simply hadn’t existed.
At the time, he had contacted a man he’d met online who went by the nickname Arto. They had
exchanged a few e-mails, with Ross asking Arto if it would be possible to build such an anonymous
online store (primarily for illegal drugs, which Ross didn’t think should be illegal) that the
government would have no control over.
Arto, who was clearly an expert on such matters, explained that most of the technology needed to
make this idea happen existed. There was a Web browser called Tor, which enabled people to slip
behind a curtain online into another, separate Internet—one where the U.S. government couldn’t track
people because, thanks to Tor, everyone became invisible. Unlike the normal Internet, where Ross’s
every move was stored in databases by Facebook or Google or Comcast, on this side of the Internet,
called the Dark Web, you simply couldn’t be found.
But there were complicating factors to Ross’s idea. Specifically, in 2009 there wasn’t a good
way to pay for these things anonymously online. Cash was too risky, and credit cards would leave
evidence of someone buying a bag of cocaine from an illegal drug Web site.
For inspiration, Arto suggested that Ross should read a relatively unknown novel titled A
Lodging of Wayfaring Men. The novel tells a tale of a group of libertarian freedom seekers who
create an alternate online society on the Internet that operates using its own digital currency, free from
government control. In the book this online world grows so quickly that the U.S. government becomes
petrified by its power. FBI agents are sent out to try to stop the Web site before it destroys the very
fabric of society.
Arto’s advice was remarkably inspiring to Ross, but the logistical issues remained. Specifically,
that there wasn’t a way to pay for drugs on such a Web site.
And so, for a year, the idea sat on a shelf in Ross’s mind.
That was, until now. Ross had come across a technology that had recently emerged called
Bitcoin. It was being billed as a new form of digital cash that was, from the research he had done,
completely untraceable. Anyone in the world could use it to buy and sell anything without leaving
digital fingerprints behind.
The people (or person) who had created this new technology were anonymous, but the idea was
simple: While you needed dollars to buy things in America, pounds in England, yen in Japan, or
rupees in India, this new Bitcoin currency was meant to be used all around the world and specifically
on the Internet. And just like cash, it was untraceable. To get some Bitcoins, you could exchange them
online in the same way you could go to the airport and exchange dollars for euros. It was the missing
piece Ross had been waiting for to build his experimental world with no rules.
So in the summer of 2010, while Julia was photographing naked women, Ross Ulbricht, the
failed physicist who wanted so badly to make a difference in the world, sat down at his beloved
laptop to realize the idea that had been lodged in his mind for so long. A Web site that would be a free
and open marketplace where people from all over the planet could buy anything and everything.
Things that they couldn’t currently get their hands on because of the restrictions of the U.S.
government—most important, drugs. As his fingers touched the keyboard and code appeared on his