Ross Ulbricht Quotes

Who was this criminal mastermind behind Silk Road? Not at all whom you would expect. Ross Ulbricht was the kind of kid any parent would be proud of, an Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, who had earned a master's degree in science and engineering.

As she came to a close, she looked at Ross and said, “What is clear is that people are very, very complex and you are one of them. There is good in you, Mr. Ulbricht, I have no doubt, but there is also bad, and what you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.

Each and every day, as we navigate the real world, we leave a billion little fingerprints in our wake. The door handles we touch, the screens we press, and the people we interact with all capture a trace of our being there. The same is true on the Internet. We share pictures and videos on social networks, leave comments on news articles. We e-mail, text, and chat with hundreds of people throughout the day. If there is anyone who left more of those digital fingerprints lying around the Internet than most people, it was Ross Ulbricht. He spent years living on his computer and interacting with people, good and bad, through that machine. Over the course of my research for this book, I was able to gain access to more than two million words of chat logs and messages between the Dread Pirate Roberts and dozens of his employees. These logs were excruciatingly in-depth conversations about every moment and every decision that went into creating and managing the Silk Road.