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Ross showed her what was for sale and how it worked. When he clicked on a green “Drugs”
link, it led to a section titled “Psychedelics.” And there, for sale on the Silk Road, were the magic
mushrooms Ross had grown a few months earlier, listed for sale as if he were hawking a used bicycle
or a box of Girl Scout cookies on Craigslist.
He then explained how to buy Bitcoins, the currency needed to buy drugs on the site. It was like
buying coins at a video arcade. You exchanged your cash for tokens, and then you got to play. Just as
at an arcade, at the end of the day, no one knew who had used those tokens because they all looked the
same. (Bitcoin wasn’t just meant for illegal purchases, either; you could use the digital cash to buy
things on dozens of legitimate Web sites around the world.)
“Give me your credit card,” Ross said as he navigated to an online Bitcoin exchange, where
Julia could interchange her real dollars for digital gold. They typed in her credit card information and
watched as the page loaded.
“How will anyone else know how to do this?” Julia said.
Ahh, good question from the audience . . . but here at the Silk Road, we’ve thought of
everything.
Ross explained that he had set up a blog post that was essentially an instruction manual
explaining how to go through the process he was now demonstrating to Julia.
“But how will people find that site?” she asked.
This was greeted with a proud smile from Ross.
At exactly 4:20 p.m. on Thursday, January 27, Ross had gone to a Web site called the Shroomery,
which was an online haven for all things related to magic mushrooms, and registered an account under
the name Altoid. He then posted a comment on the site’s forum under the Altoid pseudonym, writing
that he had just happened to “come across this website called Silk Road,” as if he had been out for a
stroll on the Dark Web and accidentally stumbled upon it. He then urged people to check it out. This,
he hoped, was how people would find his new creation.
He was unsure if the anonymous posting would work, so soon afterward Ross registered the
same nickname on another Web site focused on Bitcoin, under a thread discussing whether it was
possible to build a “heroin store” online, and he urged people to visit the Silk Road. “What an
awesome thread!” he wrote. “You guys have a ton of great ideas. Has anyone seen Silk Road yet?”
Again, Ross did this incognito so it could never be traced back to him.
All he had to do now was wait. But not for long.
“It’s crazy,” Ross told Julia. “People have already started to come to the site from those forum
posts.”
“Has anyone bought anything yet?” she asked him as she clicked around on her laptop, exploring
the Silk Road.
“Not yet,” he said.
But he knew that they would. How could they not?