Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.
How collapsing bookshelves inspired Ross Ulbricht to launch illegal drug marketplace Silk Road
How collapsing bookshelves inspired Ross Ulbricht to launch illegal drug marketplace Silk Road
Cale Guthrie WeissmanApr 29, 2015, 02:06 IST
Who is Ross Ulbricht? While he's been known for some time as the brains and ideological force of the now-defunct online black marketplace Silk Road, his path to this role was long and winding.In a new Wired feature, we get a closer look into who Ulbricht was before he formed Silk Road.He was sort of a lost soul. He studied undergrad physics at the University of Texas Dallas, and then attended Pennsylvania State for graduate school. Following grad school he had a series of failed business ventures, including day trading as well as his own video game venture. After those personally humiliating experiences, he took the helm of an online book business called Good Wagon. It was then that Ulbricht began researching bitcoin as a way to circumvent marketplace norms.Ulbricht was a staunch libertarian - an avid reader of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises - and he believed that economic theory could be used as "a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind."This led the young man to a realization. While working at Good Wagon, Ulbricht wrote in his journal his dream; "to create a website where people could by anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them." He knew bitcoin could provide the technology.All Ulbricht needed was a "business model and strategy."While these ideas were percolating in his head, it took an act of physical destruction to cause Ulbricht to launch his site.Wired writes:Following this ordeal, Ulbricht left the company and began working full-time on Silk Road. It sold its first items - a batch of psychedelic mushrooms - in January of 2011.As time went on Silk Road became the largest underground marketplace in the world. This, ultimately, led to Ulbricht's highly-publicized trial and conviction.To read more about the first half of Silk Road's wild ride, check out the lengthy Wired piece.
