American Kingpin
Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
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4.7 • 116 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom – and almost got away with it.
In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything – drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons – free of the government’s watchful eye. While the federal government were undertaking an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, the Silk Road quickly ballooned into a $1.2 billion enterprise.
Ross embraced his new role as kingpin, taking drastic steps to protect himself – including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.
Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralised Web advocates and the old world of government control, order and the rule of law.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In 2011, entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht established a dark web of a marketplace on the Internet, where drugs, weapons, and body parts could be bought and sold anonymously with Bitcoins. Known as The Silk Road, it thrived for years until a collection of U.S. federal agencies shut it down. While American Kingpin matter-of-factly tells the tale of the site’s rise and fall, author Nick Bilton also takes pains to locate the humanity behind the headlines. Alongside profiles of the IRS, FBI and Homeland Security agents whose epiphanies cracked the investigation, he probes Ulbricht’s own philosophies, psychology and ultimate moral erosion.
Customer Reviews
An addictive read
This book is so well written and researched. It’s multi dimensional and perspective writing helps you sympathise with both criminal and the cops. True crime at its best. Love that it reads like fiction, if you didn’t know it was true you’d swear it was the best detective storytelling you’d ever read. Well done.
Epic and captivating
Excellent book, I couldn’t put it down
Riveting read
Couldn’t put down