34856893457934

Ross’s cut from the commission fees was now averaging $10,000 a day and growing higher—
quite literally—by the hour. In reality Ross’s wealth was doubling and tripling every few weeks as
the exchange rate for Bitcoins rose. If Ross had $100,000 in one of his Bitcoin accounts on Monday, it
could be worth as much as $200,000 by Friday without his doing a thing. If VJ’s predictions were
correct, in a bear case Ross could personally be making $100 million a year by 2014. In a bull case,
if the current value of Bitcoins continued to grow as it had been doing, he could be making ten times
that in no time at all.
But the pile of digital money introduced a whole new set of problems. Besides the issue of
turning it into cash—and doing so without the tax man finding out—more money meant more
customers, and that brought a slew of issues. There were the rampant conflicts on the site between
dealers and buyers, slowing servers overloaded with new visitors, and a lot more attention from law
enforcement.
“All that money won’t be worth much if we’re behind bars,” Ross wrote to VJ as they discussed
the site’s vertiginous growth and the anxiety that came with it—anxiety that Ross knew he had to take
ahold of, or it would take ahold of him, inevitably leading to a mistake. A mistake was the surest way
to be caught. And being caught was the absolute last thing Ross, VJ, or the tens of thousands of people
now buying and selling on the site wanted.
“We need . . . contingencies,” VJ argued, “and a plan.”
So with Variety Jones’s guidance, Ross came up with just that: a plan.
First and foremost, Ross would leave Australia and go home. Traveling had given him some
much-needed perspective, but months on the road had also given him a whole new set of worries. At
first he had found solace and comfort staying with his sister in Australia. He fell in love with the
idyllic climate and the fun that came with that, including being battered around by the Bondi Beach
waves. With no day job to tie him down, Ross had soon set out for a month jaunting around Asia.
Looking just like every other backpacker trekking through the islands around the Pacific Ocean, he
stayed in youth hostels and ate noodles from roadside vendors. The only difference between him and
the throwaway friends he met along the way was that they were mostly broke college students
exploring the world before they moved back to America or Europe to get a job and settle down.
Whereas Ross was surreptitiously running the biggest drug-dealing Web site in the world and was
personally worth millions of dollars.
Blending in had been easy, with his scarce belongings and scraggly hair. That was, until
something went wrong on the site.
Ross had been left with no choice but to try running the Silk Road from Internet cafés and
glacially slow Wi-Fi hot spots across Asia, which meant every single time he had to check the site
there were dozens of prying eyes to peer over his shoulder. This meant that in the middle of
conversations he would tell his employees he had to relocate.
“I’m going to move location,” he wrote, “brb.”
“Moving location.”
“I don’t like this spot anymore.”
“Gotta move, I’ll be right back.”
“Changing location.”
Sometimes he would just slam his laptop shut if someone caught a glimpse of his computer
screen. Then he would scurry away (hopefully) unnoticed. But often he didn’t have any choice but to