Quote from: duke1839 on January 18, 2015, 02:09:24 AM

I was in the courtroom on Wednesday and Thursday. The jurors appeared bored with the direct examination, most were fighting just to stay awake. The exception was when Mr. DerYeghiayan started talking about what was on Mr. Ulbricht's laptop when he was arrested and what scraps of paper were found in his bedroom trash can. The jurors appeared very interested those two times.

During cross examination the jury was awake and interested in everything being said. Just from my observation the defense's strategy seems to be working. You have an agent testifying about how he was able to assume multiple different identities online and take over the moderator account "cirrus" without being detected so how can they then argue that there was only one DPR and Ulbricht was it? Keep in mind that Karpeles wasn't just a suspect, the agent believed he had probable cause to search Mr. Karpeles' email accounts.

The defense also poked many holes in the prosecution's case. The agent did not know exactly when the buyers and sellers guides were posted. The agent did not know when the escrow and commission system was started. The agent did not know when the bitcoin tumbler was started. The agent did not know when hacking equipment and software was first sold on Silk Road. These questions seem to imply that the defense is going to, as they already have, readily admit that Ulbricht had a hand in starting Silk Road but it is these features that add the damaging money laundering, conspiracy, and hacking charges.

The agent also insisted that he thought DPR was male but he also admitted that he was surprised to find out that the original "cirrus" was female. The defense also brought up how the price of bitcoin jumped up to over a thousand dollars immediately after Ulbricht's arrest. Since Mt. Gox's trading bots may have been the reason behind that price increase expect the defense to make the case that Ulbricht was set up as the fall guy so that Karpeles could benefit from that rapid price increase. This was not brought up in the courtroom but I wouldn't be surprised if it is brought up later.

The Bitcoin Talk forums were also brought up on Thursday. The defense is going to say that Karpeles created the Bitcoin Talk forums. And both the Bitcoin Talk forums and the Silk Road forums not only use the same software but the exact same version of the software even though other versions have come out. The defense will also make the point that this software is not commonly used to make online forums.

Agent DerYeghiayan himself stated during the investigation that he thought that DPR had changed at least once and he was frustrated by not being able to be sure if the screen names he was talking to were the same persons throughout. He even said "Who's on first?" at one point during the investigation. He also noticed that DPR was offline for two days prior to Mr. Ulbricht's arrest which was an unusually long time for DPR to be offline. He also noticed that there was an account called "PeaceLoveHarmony" that was sitting on DPR's profile for over two hours which was unusual behavior. Yeghiayan thought that "PeaceLoveHarmony" could be law enforcement so he asked all his colleges if it was them and they all said no but it could have been law enforcement from another team unrelated to his investigation.