Review American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

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American Kingpin is about the guy behind the Silk Road website. SR is the one where you could buy drugs, guns, whatever and have them shipped worldwide, kind of eBay or Amazon for illegal stuff.

The book is well researched and sourced, but the writing style is a bit odd to me. It reads more like a young adult novel or magazine story than a work of non-fiction. It took me a bit to get into because it cuts from one person to another, often in short segments. The story of SR's rise and fall has a lot of players, but presenting those players was a bit rough. Eventually it came together, but it made for some rough going at the beginning.

When the author bothered to explain tech details, he did okay, but often he would gloss over them. He reduced Bitcoin into 2-3 sentences and his description of website creation was weak. The ending of the book felt thrown together and there were some major players that he barely mentioned. Maybe he had a reason for this, maybe he didn't, but it made for a rushed ending.

Overall, it is a good book and a very good story, but the presentation is not my cup of tea.
 
If anyone is interested in supplemental information on the SR and Ross Ulbricht I highly recommend t his video. It focuses almost exclusively on the messages and downfall of Ross and dramatizes things a bit for entertainment (think old school Forensic Files).

 
If anyone is interested in supplemental information on the SR and Ross Ulbricht I highly recommend t his video. It focuses almost exclusively on the messages and downfall of Ross and dramatizes things a bit for entertainment (think old school Forensic Files).


Nice find! The book goes over the murder-for-hire stuff, but really only covers one instance and the players mentioned in the video are never mentioned. Our man Ross clearly had no problems having people knocked off in order to protect his "Libertarian" website.
 
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