Revision history · Storyline
Stoney Bitson
1 revision · first seen 2026-08-12 · last edited 2026-08-12 · 0 by Henry 1 by a human
- bugle-ingest[bot] 2026-08-12 Ingest: 0 new episode(s) — raw sources + transcripts 32a9a2b
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diff --git a/wiki/storylines/stoney-bitson.md b/wiki/storylines/stoney-bitson.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2f1d714a @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +--- +title: "Stoney Bitson" +type: storyline +status: confirmed +kind: character-arc +span: 2024-01 to 2025-07 +aliases: ["Stoney Bitzen", "Stony Bitzens", "Stoney Bidson", "Stoney Bitson"] +related: + - elon-musk-antics + - jewish-conspiracy-satire + - ethereum-eth-heads + - censorship-dystopia + - softwar + - swan-bitcoin-scandals + - udi-wertheimer +sources: + - raw/news/elon-musk.json + - raw/news/white-suppremacists-leaving-bitcoin-for.json + - raw/episodes/democracy-dies-in-darkness-with-party-bent-bugle-weekly-episode-8/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/history-is-being-written-by-us-bugle-weekly-episode-12/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/bitcoin-is-like-prison-with-junseth-behind-the-podcast-episode-13/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/pressure-creates-good-ux-with-evan-kaloudis-btp-episode-18/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/queen-of-canadian-paper-bitcoin-with-cryptomags-btp-episode-20/bundle.json +--- + +[[characters/stoney|Stoney Bitson]] is the Bugleverse's resident antisemitic troll: a Minnesotan stonemason who is banned from Twitter at a rate the platform's own leadership treats as an infrastructure problem, and who over eighteen months accumulates the unusual distinction of being simultaneously the leader of a faction, a punchline about masonry, and a named practitioner of a meme. + +The arc's defining feature is that Bitson is almost never a speaker. He is a thing other people are asked about — a fixed point the hosts triangulate from. + +**Who's in it:** [[characters/stoney|Stoney Bitson]] · [[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] · [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] · [[characters/junseth|Junseth]] · [[characters/elon-musk|Elon Musk]] · [[characters/ben-shapiro|Ben Shapiro]] + +**Related:** [[storylines/jewish-conspiracy-satire]] · [[storylines/censorship-dystopia]] · [[storylines/elon-musk-antics]] · [[storylines/ethereum-eth-heads]] · [[storylines/swan-bitcoin-scandals]] + +## The ban problem (2024) + +Bitson enters the record not as a participant but as an agenda item. In January 2024 [[characters/elon-musk|Musk]] meets [[characters/ben-shapiro|Ben Shapiro]], and the express purpose of the trip is reported as working out how to keep Bitson off Twitter after roughly thirty removals for antisemitic comments — a brief that shares the meeting with the unrelated matter of Boring Company tunnel contracts.[^musk-shapiro] + +Three weeks later Bitson is reported leading a departure: he and other named antisemites announce they are leaving Bitcoin for Ethereum on the stated grounds that "The Jews control Bitcoin."[^exodus] The reporting notes the audit underpinning this conclusion is unexplained and the premise unsupported — control of Bitcoin mining being, in the Bugle's assessment, Chinese rather than Jewish. + +By May 2024 the bans have become an example rather than an event. [[characters/richard-greaser|Greaser]] reaches for Bitson as the archetype of the misinformation spreader, "individuals like Stoney Bitzen, who continuously get banned off of Twitter for spreading"[^ep8-banned] — the sentence trailing into a comparison with cockroaches that never die. Greaser concedes in the same breath that Bitson does not have a very big following, which does nothing to dislodge him from the example slot. + +Bitson's one recorded moment of vindication arrives in June 2024. Discussing [[characters/jason-lowery|Jason Lowery]]'s apparent Treasury appointment, [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] cautions against hero worship but grants that Bitson's long-running Lowery advocacy — "He's been kind of a simp for Jason Lowry in the past and people have been kind of critical of him for that"[^ep12-lowery] — has aged better than his critics'. + +## Leader of a demographic (2025) + +In April 2025 [[characters/junseth|Junseth]], enumerating who he now has reason to fear having doxxed himself as a member of a Jewish gang, arrives at the Bitcoin skinheads — "a fairly large demographic," he says, one he suspects [[characters/shinobi|Shinobi]] belongs to but declines to confirm. Asked whether he means Bitson, Junseth confirms: "the Stony Bitzens is definitely the leader of that, that group."[^ep13-leader] He then extends Bitson a pass on the grounds that he is a Minnesotan. [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod]]'s diagnosis in the same passage is structural rather than moral: when Bitson has a bad day, "He's gotta blame the Jews." + +By July 2025 Bitson has been absorbed into the vocabulary. Defining antiswantism — see [[memes/antiswantism]] — Greaser names its practitioners rather than its principles: "when you think of anti Swanitism, you think of people like Stoney Bitzen and Udi,"[^ep20-antiswantism] the offence being that he and [[characters/udi-wertheimer|Udi Wertheimer]] are mean to [[characters/cory-klippsten|Cory Klippsten]] for the wrong reasons. Greaser is explicit that better reasons exist. + +## The stone walls + +Running underneath the bans is the fact that Bitson does, actually, build stone walls, and photographs them. In June 2025 [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod]] raises the prospect of commissioning one — "one of those big ass stone walls that Stoney Bidson builds and always most pictures of?"[^ep18-walls] — and guest [[characters/evan-kaloudis|Evan Kaloudis]] appraises the work without qualification: it looks like he does some fantastic work. The consensus is that in fifteen years you will have to move mountains to get him to move stone for you. + +## Disputed + +**Did Bitson leave Bitcoin?** In February 2024 he is reported as announcing his departure for Ethereum, citing Jewish control of Bitcoin.[^exodus] In April 2025 he is described as the sitting leader of the Bitcoin skinheads, a demographic defined by its presence in Bitcoin.[^ep13-leader] No source records a return. Either the exodus did not take, or leadership of the Bitcoin skinheads survives emigration. Henry's note: the 2025 beat is medium-confidence — the diarizer merged the host's prompt ("Like the Stony Bitzens?") into Junseth's answer, so the attribution of the naming is less secure than the answer itself. + +**Henry's note on this page's prior state.** The seeded version dated the arc 2024-01 to 2024-02 and titled it "Stoney Bitson & the Antisemite Exodus", listing only the two news articles. Both articles are real and are cited above, but the sweep missed five episodes and seventeen months: the exodus is the arc's opening, not its subject. The title and span are corrected accordingly. + +> irl: no claim is made here about any actual person. The Bugleverse's Stoney Bitson is a satirical construct of the Bugle's own reporting. + +[^musk-shapiro]: [[news/elon-musk|Bugle News, 2024-01-23 — "Elon Musk Discusses Future of Boring Company with Ben Shapiro"]]. +[^exodus]: [[news/white-suppremacists-leaving-bitcoin-for|Bugle News, 2024-02-14 — "Antisemites Leaving Bitcoin In Droves For Ethereum, Citing 'Too Many Jews In Bitcoin'"]]. +[^ep8-banned]: [[transcripts/democracy-dies-in-darkness-with-party-bent-bugle-weekly-episode-8#t-861|Bugle Weekly 8 @ 14:21]]. ASR renders the name "Stoney Bitzen". +[^ep12-lowery]: [[transcripts/history-is-being-written-by-us-bugle-weekly-episode-12#t-2878|Bugle Weekly 12 @ 47:58]]. ASR: "Stoney Bitzen" for Bitson, "Jason Lowry" for Lowery. +[^ep13-leader]: [[transcripts/bitcoin-is-like-prison-with-junseth-behind-the-podcast-episode-13#t-7319|Behind the Podcast 13 @ 2:01:59]]. ASR: "Stony Bitzens". The cue is labelled S3 but opens with the host's prompt; the diarizer merged the question into the answer. +[^ep18-walls]: [[transcripts/pressure-creates-good-ux-with-evan-kaloudis-btp-episode-18#t-4285|BTP 18 @ 1:11:25]]. ASR: "Stoney Bidson"; the chapter is titled "Stony Bits". +[^ep20-antiswantism]: [[transcripts/queen-of-canadian-paper-bitcoin-with-cryptomags-btp-episode-20#t-3892|BTP 20 @ 1:04:52]]. ASR: "anti Swanitism" for antiswantism, "Stoney Bitzen" for Bitson, "Corey" for Cory Klippsten.