Brian Shaw completed testimony on Silk Road records before the government rested and three defense character witnesses testified. The court kept disputed drug-weight estimates excluded and denied the defense's acquittal motion on all seven counts.
Full day summary
Outside the jury's presence, the court denied the defense's request for a mistrial or permission to call proposed bitcoin expert Mr. Antonopoulus. It maintained his exclusion based on qualification and disclosure deficiencies. The defense's proposed opinions about bitcoin access, ownership and transaction accounting were not admitted testimony. The court also excluded Defense Exhibit E as hearsay and applied the requirement of a connection between an asserted alternative perpetrator and the charged crimes, rejecting the defense's stated nontruth purpose.
Brian Shaw continued his testimony about Silk Road messages, blockchain records and transaction data. He matched message details to transfers of 1,670 and 3,000 bitcoins. The court admitted a stipulation that Canadian authorities had no records of the specified homicides or other evidence of physical harm resulting from the plans discussed by DPR and redandwhite. Shaw reported 1,530,252 database transactions, $213,888,103 in recorded sales and $13,174,896 in recorded commissions. He explained that the dollar totals summed values recorded for individual transactions, rather than reflecting later bitcoin appreciation.
The court questioned the foundation for drug-weight estimates derived from a sample of 100 transactions. After the court outlined additional disclosure and foundation requirements, the government abandoned the proposed exhibits; Exhibits 940H and 940I remained excluded. On cross-examination, Shaw acknowledged limits in the server evidence: a key ending in frosty@frosty could be generated on any computer, he did not know its earlier contents, and he could think of no way to determine whether several named accounts represented different people or the same people. He clarified that the message compilation contained one public forum post and otherwise private messages.
After Shaw finished testifying, the government read a chat excerpt concerning secrecy, an alibi and running a criminal enterprise, then rested. The defense called Karen Steib Arnold, Daniel Jefferson Davis and Thomas Haney, who described Ulbricht's reputation for peacefulness among people they knew. On cross-examination, Davis denied that Ulbricht had told him about creating Silk Road, growing or selling illegal drugs, living under a false name, or ordering nine fake IDs.
After the jury left, the court denied the defense's Rule 29 acquittal motion on all seven counts, finding sufficient evidence for jury consideration and sufficient support for venue. It reserved further rulings on investigator Bridget Prince's proposed timeline and summary testimony pending a proffer and legal authorities. Ulbricht said he would not testify; the court explained that he could reconsider before the case ended. The court also revised the Count Four instruction to require unanimous agreement on which three or more violations constituted the continuing series.