The Homeland Security agent’s theory was that Karpeles, as owner of Mt. Gox, held an enormous amount of Bitcoin. He used Silk Road to leverage that price and raise it, which it did by several hundred times over during the course of Silk Road’s lifespan. Bitcoin was worth around $2 at Silk Road's launch and hit as high as $290 by 2013.
What the hell do they mean by "leverage that price and raise it"?
Can anyone here come up with a scenario how keeping gox money at silk road could have raised the price?
Well he knew how to do perfect trades (and he had tons of btc - probably more than 200k), he was the CEO after all. So he was in complete control of the price for years. Why do you think we have been going down for more than a year after gox collapsed? Because Mark is gone. That is the main reason.
So he used Gox to acquire coin and raise price, did he really need SR too?
Was SR-created demand such a driving factor in price raise?