American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
A little more than an hour later, at around 5:30 p.m., Preston walked out of his bedroom for what would be the last time in his life.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
There was no fate worse to him than losing control of what he had built.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
She knew exactly what those things were, and she knew she couldn’t stop him from doing them. He would just keep eating, and eating, and eating.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
MOST PEOPLE GO through life thinking that tomorrow they’re going to do something great. Tomorrow will be the day that they wake up and discover what they were put on this earth to do. But then tomorrow comes—and goes. As does the next day. Before long, they realize that there aren’t that many tomorrows left.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
How quickly life changes. One minute you’re making $300 a week as a college researcher. You’re sleeping in a basement and your only belongings are two black garbage bags, one full of clean clothes, the other dirty, and your biggest worry in the world is whether the pretty girl with the black curly hair whom you just met at the drum circle will call
... See moreNick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
The Silk Road wasn’t just a digital drug cartel. It was a highly lucrative start-up with a lot of optionality.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
Sometimes he listened to Hope 89.1, a local Christian radio station that would whisper the Lord’s Prayer into his ear, promising that if Carl followed the ways of the Bible and did the right thing, he would be granted the life he had always wanted.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
he did it with such beauty and so adroitly that, to him at least, the very sin was absolved by the manner in which it was carried out.
Nick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
The CEOs of these other start-ups were no different from Ross, either. They had all read the same Ayn Rand books. These chief executives shared the same quotes on Facebook as he did: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” The leaders of these companies all preached the same verbiage as the Dread Pirate Roberts to
... See moreNick Bilton • American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
“I think a man is his own God and can decide for himself what’s right and wrong,” Ross said. “As a man, I decide for myself.”