An excerpt from Vanity Fair -
SILICON VALLEY MURDER MYSTERY: HOW DRUGS AND PARANOIA DOOMED SILK ROAD
Silk Road once reigned as the Internet’s premier destination for drug deals and even more illicit fare. But as the Web site became a billion-dollar enterprise, its creator, Ross Ulbricht, went from idealistic to dangerous. An adaptation from Nick Bilton’s new book shows how the empire collapsed.
By Nick Bilton
Ross Ulbricht had imagined that it might all come down to this one day. That at some point during the prodigious rise of his hot tech start-up he would be obliged to make a terrifyingly ruthless decision. Now, in early 2013, the time had arrived. The question was rather simple: Was he ready to kill someone to protect his billion-dollar company?
The technology business has long purported to change the world and make it a better place. But, in reality, there is a decidedly more cynical underside to all this euphoria. In Silicon Valley, after all, many founders will often do whatever is necessary to protect their creations—whether that means paying a hefty legal settlement to hush the people who helped hatch the idea for their company in the first place (Facebook, Square, Snapchat), callously vanquishing a co-founder (Twitter, Foursquare, Tinder), or remorselessly breaking laws and putting thousands of people out of work (Uber, Airbnb, among hundreds of others). But, for Ulbricht, the price was steeper. In order to save his beloved start-up, the Silk Road, an Amazon-like “everything store” for the Dark Web, he needed to “call on my muscle,” as he put it to one associate. He needed to have a guy whacked.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-drugs-murder
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