Ross Ulbricht, the 29-year-old San Francisco man accused of running the world's biggest online drug marketplace, Silk Road, said he is "not excessively" concerned about the future in an interview given from Alameda County jail on Monday.

Speaking to Lauren Smiley of San Francisco Magazine, Ulbricht – inmate ULW981 – revealed that his arrest two weeks ago was the first of his life.

He is now alone for at least 20 hours a day, and has little contact with the outside world, barring a one-hour phone call with the family members and friends.

Ulbricht would not comment on his guilt or innocence – though in court he denied that he used the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts - which was used by the operator of Silk Road - and agreed to be extradited to New York City to face charges.

Silk Road was a website on the "dark web" which could only be accessed via the anonymisation service Tor. Launched in February 2011, it became the hub for a substantial amount of legal and illegal dealing in goods and services, all of which had to be paid for using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The FBI seized the site on 2 October, and arrested Ulbricht, who has been charged with money laundering, drug trafficking, facilitating computer hacking, and soliciting murder. The FBI also seized more than 28,000 Bitcoins with a value of around $3.6m. A number of other arrests have followed in other countries.

"Of course – do I need to even ask? – he isn’t permitted internet access," adds Smiley, who wasn't allowed to take a pen, paper or recording device in to her interview with the accused. That meant Ulbricht hadn't heard that his former flat-mates had been interviewed. "He repeats the statement back to me as a question, unbelieving," said Smiley.

Ulbricht wouldn't answer any queries about his case, refusing to comment on whether he would be posting bail, or even who had been visiting him in jail.He had been advised by his attorney not to talk to the press at all, but wanted "to see what it would be like".

“This is the first time I’ve been arrested,” Ulbricht volunteers. Really, I ask, no DUIs [driving under the influence, ie while drunk], no college high jinks? “Nope.” He tells me very matter of factly that he spends 20 to 22 hours a day in his cell alone, with just a window in the door to the pod, and a blurred one to the outdoors. He gets let out for showers or to go out to the yard accompanied by guards, but not with other inmates. He can hear other prisoners talking through the walls, but rarely adds anything. His daily interactions: a few comments with guards, one hour of phone time a day to family members and friends who’ve registered to receive his calls. He eats in his cell – the food’s not half bad, he says. The other inmates in his pod know who he is from watching the TV news, but Ulbricht has no view of the TV from his cell.

While Ulbricht has been in jail, a second major arrest related to Silk Road has been made in Washington state, where police believe they have found one of the biggest dealers on the site.

‘Really tasty looking methamphetamine’

According to the criminal complaint, the dealer went by the pseudonym Nod and allegedly sold more than 2.5kg of cocaine on the site in the last four months, as well as almost 600g of heroin and 100g of methamphetamine. They were in the top 1% of dealers on the site.

But despite the timing of the arrests, the criminal complaint suggests that Nod was tracked down through old-fashioned detective work, and not with information gleaned from the Silk Road seizure.

Christopher Armstrong, a special agent with the department of homeland security, revealed that the trail was picked up during an interdiction targeting drug trafficking. A package sent from an address in Lynnwood, Washington, was intercepted in September 2012. The named sender didn’t exist, but the resident at that address gave permission for the package to be opened, and it contained heroin.

Over the next four days, more packages were intercepted, with the same packing style but all apparently sent from different addresses, with different non-existent people listed as the sender. More heroin was found, as was a package of cash worth $3,200 (£2,000).

From there, the trail was followed back to the UPS store which had sent the $3,200, and to a safe deposit box rented in the name of Aaron Thompson.

Looking for further similar packages revealed yet more fake names and other post offices which had been used. Eventually, in March 2013, Armstrong claimed their surveillance linked those packages to a Jenna White.

White was driving a car registered to Steven Sadler, who was identified by post office employees as having been the man who took rented safe deposit boxes.

The link to Silk Road came when the police received a search warrant to open a package which again had been packed in a similar manner to the September 2012 parcels. It was found to contain heroin and cocaine, and the intended recipient agreed to co-operate, saying that the parcel had been ordered from a Silk Road dealer called Nod.

Further investigation apparently strengthened the link between Nod and Sadler.

Despite the detail of the criminal complaint, it may not be descriptive of how the investigation was carried out. Such affidavits don’t have to describe how investigations actually proceeded, but only how they could have made the link between the accused and the crimes.

As a result, there remains the possibility that the actual discovery was made with the help of information gleaned from the Silk Road’s servers.

The user reviews for Nod on Silk Road reveal them to be a popular and well-respected dealer. Someone who bought 2g of cocaine said it was a “1980s Time Machine”, while a user who purchased 3.5g of methamphetamine said it was “really tasty looking methamphetamine”.

As the Daily Dot’s Patrick Howell O’Neill reports, Nod had such a reputation for quality before the Silk Road closed that he or she was able to charge a huge markup on the drugs they dealt.

“In private conversations later leaked by other vendors, Nod claimed he was making $20,000 per month on his cocaine alone,” O’Neill reported.

“He bragged about his profit margin increasing to the point where he was making three times as much as contemporary heroin dealers on Silk Road.”

• When Dread Pirate Roberts, the founder of the Silk Road, was arrested, the criminal complaint revealed a litany of errors, including asking for coding advice under his real name.