Pirate Roberts

In 2011, a young idealist named Ross Ulbricht launched a website called Silk Road. It was an Amazon for drugs, hidden in the dark web and powered by a new, untraceable currency called Bitcoin. Ulbricht believed he was creating a libertarian utopia, a free market beyond the reach of the state. "The Pirate Roberts" charts the rise and fall of the world's most notorious online marketplace.



Operating under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts," Ulbricht grew his startup into a multimillion-dollar empire. But as the site grew, so did the violence. The book details how the philosophical idealist began ordering hits on blackmailers (though no bodies were found) and how he was hunted by a ragtag team of DEA, FBI, and IRS agents.



It culminates in the dramatic arrest in a San Francisco public library, where agents had to snatch his open laptop before he could encrypt it. This is a digital thriller about the corruption of ideals, the birth of the crypto-economy, and the thin line between a startup founder and a drug lord.