Breaking Bad & Silk-Road

In the fiction soap “Breaking Bad” a 50 year old, penniless, high school teacher Walter White, without any drug background, could make this statement:  “Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly up.”
Silk road’s 29 year old owner Ross William Ulbricht handled a billion dollar worth of transaction in drugs in mere 2.5 years. He was an average geek who operated out of a public library, and perfectly blended with the crowd.
These 2 people completely changed the popular perception of a flourishing drug empire. Unlike what is depicted godfather or mafia movies, they did not carry guns, or had a huge network 50-100 of sworn, loyal followers who are willing to die/go to prison. They did not have an elaborate international logistics network to source and distribute, neither had they had the state of the art technology & intelligence network needed to run the empire. They did not have a pool of corrupt DEA/law enforcement agencies to tip them off.
These 2 stories are stories of 2 outsiders, newbies in an otherwise organized industry. In the industry that was considered stable & mature, they infused fresh sparks of ideas. Sometimes a little hard work and a lot of passion is all it takes to turn the dreams to reality.
I am sure most of the readers have neither consumed drugs nor know how to access silk-road/ Tor network or have a bitcoin wallet. I am not glorifying this industry, rather am trying to extract few words of wisdom & analogy from this ocean of sin.