American Kingpin Quotes

“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: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“You type lines of code into a computer, and out comes a world that didn’t exist before. There are no laws here except your laws. You decide who is given power and who is not. And then you wake up one morning and you’re not you anymore. You’re one of the most notorious drug dealers alive. And now you’re deciding if someone should live or die. You’re the judge in your own court. You’re god.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“What he needed was a place where he could be on his laptop for eighteen hours a day and no one would question why he was being antisocial or what he was working on. Which meant he had to go to San Francisco.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“Over time he learned that the way to have a leg up on everyone else was to anticipate something before it happened and then have the answer to it.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“As she came to a close, she looked at Ross and said, “What is clear is that people are very, very complex and you are one of them. There is good in you, Mr. Ulbricht, I have no doubt, but there is also bad, and what you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

“Each and every day, as we navigate the real world, we leave a billion little fingerprints in our wake. The door handles we touch, the screens we press, and the people we interact with all capture a trace of our being there. The same is true on the Internet. We share pictures and videos on social networks, leave comments on news articles. We e-mail, text, and chat with hundreds of people throughout the day. If there is anyone who left more of those digital fingerprints lying around the Internet than most people, it was Ross Ulbricht. He spent years living on his computer and interacting with people, good and bad, through that machine. Over the course of my research for this book, I was able to gain access to more than two million words of chat logs and messages between the Dread Pirate Roberts and dozens of his employees. These logs were excruciatingly in-depth conversations about every moment and every decision that went into creating and managing the Silk Road.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“He would soon be the first person in history to start an underground drug Web site on the Internet and the first person in history to see it go bankrupt because he had written so much shitty code.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“Even though all these people were dealing in illicit activities, they each had a moral sense that their particular outlawed product was more just than another.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“(802 was his area code from Connecticut, where he had grown”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“While Ross had saved up for the perfect ring with which to propose, when he romantically asked his girlfriend for her hand in marriage (Say yes, please say yes), she instead said she had to tell Ross something (Well, this doesn’t sound good). At which point she admitted that during the past year or so she had cheated on him with several different men. (Several? As in more than one? Yes. Several.) To make matters worse, one of them was one of Ross’s best friends.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

“Let the market decide; not the government.” “Let the people determine who should win; not the politicians.” “We’re changing the world and making it a better place.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

“Wait, why do you live down here?” she asked as they lay on the bed, Ross trying to pick up where they had left off on the couch.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

“It was time to bring in the people with the calculators.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“This is one of those rare government buildings in which someone who uses a calculator for a living can wield more power than a person who carries a gun.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“Tarbell had once played a joke using another agent’s car, hooking the car’s horn up to its brake pedal so every time the agent tried to slow down on his drive home, his horn blared at the cars in front of him.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“pull 6E in a meeting with the DOJ.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web

“They looked at the world around them and saw that the government was a ball of wasteful red tape; that the taxi industry treated customers like shit; hotels overcharged and overtaxed; health care was a sham, driven by the needs of the insurance agencies, not the sick; oil-dependent cars had helped to justify an eternal war in the Middle East; and illegal drugs were only illegal because the government wanted to control the people.”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

“how to inject heroin into your eyeballs”
― Nick Bilton, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road