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commission,” Ross wrote in a letter to the site’s users, “we will charge a higher amount for low
priced items and a lower amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it.” The
announcement went on to explain that the site would take a 10 percent commission on orders less than
$50 and 1.5 percent for orders more than $1,000, with a few other fees in-between, hopefully
balancing out the scales of commissions. Ross ended his State of the Road address in the same way
Fidel Castro ended a homily in 1962 after he had successfully led the Cuban revolution: “I believe
our future is bright and we will emerge victorious.”
But not all of the buyers and sellers on the site agreed about this new future. Some were happy
about the rate hike (especially those who hawked larger shipments of drugs), but others were furious,
specifically the dealers who trafficked vast numbers of small doses. In a matter of minutes a chaotic
debate ensued on the Silk Road forums.
Ross was genuinely perplexed by the reaction. He was even hurt by the response. Didn’t these
people realize that if it weren’t for him and his revolutionary ideas, there wouldn’t be a Silk Road?
Didn’t they understand that he was putting his entire life at risk for them? If it weren’t for his work,
they would all still be buying and selling drugs on the street, risking arrest or, worse, caught up in
violent turf wars, being robbed, beaten, or even killed in a deal gone awry. And yet they had the
audacity to complain about a small commission change. Didn’t they know that this entire thing
couldn’t run itself? That this wasn’t a fudging nonprofit? It was a gosh darn business!
Ross became so worked up over the backlash to the commission changes that he responded in a
way that essentially told everyone on the site to go fuck themselves. “Whether you like it or not, I am
the captain of this ship,” he shouted in response to the outcry. “If you don’t like the rules of the game,
or you don’t trust your captain, you can get off the boat.”
It was not the best pep talk for the troops.
Thankfully, as time went by, the uproar simmered down and most people accepted the rate
changes. But a select few disconsolate dealers were still unhappy. And rumors of what they were
planning started making their way to Ross.
“I suspect that several are talking about making backup plans to jump ship, or create competing
sites,” DPR wrote to VJ in a chat. “I don’t want a mutiny.”
So Variety Jones decided to venture to the lower decks of the site to mingle with the dealers and
buyers, with the goal of finding out how many people were involved in the insurgency and whether an
actual uprising might take place.
It was around this time, on a late afternoon in mid-April, that an e-mail popped into the in-box of
the Dread Pirate Roberts, with an obscure offer. “Mr. Silk Road, I am a great admirer of your work,”
the message began, and then offered a brief explanation of who the sender was: a man who called
himself Nob and said he had been smuggling drugs for decades in South America. The end of the
letter was the best part.
“I want to buy the site.”
If a random offer to buy the site had landed in Ross’s in-box five months earlier, when stress was
at its peak and his personal relationships at their lowest, he probably would have said yes without
even a thought. Give me a bag of Bitcoin and it’s yours. Be careful: it isn’t house-trained yet. But
today, in mid-April—even with the chatter about a potential riot on the site—how Ross felt about the
future was very different.