The story of Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht in the Sunday Business section of the New York Times is an interesting sketch on a complex personality. On the one hand, he seems to be kind, compassionate, and deeply philosophical young adult who graduated from several top schools, was well regarded by his peers and parents and found a way to create an interesting living confidentially matching buyers and sellers on the web using Bitcoin, a computer generated currency that is currently unregulated. On the other hand, Silk Road seems to have been set up primarily to provide buyers and sellers of illicit drugs and other illegal activities with a means of connecting anonymously through advanced encryption technology called Tor. Mr. Ulbricht believed strongly in economic freedom and extremely limited government. The FBI recently arrested him and charged him with a series of crimes that make him out to be a sociopath.
