This week, I strip it back. No interviews. No sermon. Just signal.

I explore the philosophy of the Exit. Why fighting the system is a trap, why building alternatives is the only winning move, and how to navigate the inevitable friction this creates with the people we love.

I perform a reading of four essential essays by Max Hillebrand, woven together with a custom musical score to help the signal land.

The Program:

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)

In the first Plebchain Radio episode of 2026, Avi is joined by Noa Gruman (lead singer of Scardust) and Lahav, for a conversation ranging from Scardust’s Bitcoin-adjacent music lore (including the “RIP” video) to the reality that “Bitcoin is definitely metal” … and prog.

Noa shares highlights from Sabaton’s Legendary Orchestra project, a massive arena-scale production where she both conducts and performs lead vocals.

The conversation digs into the “fiat loop” musicians get trapped in, plus how value-for-value and Lightning splits could offer a more direct path between listeners and artists (and how labels might react).

Finally, they look ahead to Scardust’s 2026: getting back on the road with Europe dates, ProgPower USA, and a newly teased live Nostr/value-for-value event in Belgrade after BTC Prague.

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)

In this episode, Chad F joins the show to dismantle the false dichotomy between the "ancient scrolls" of RSS and the high-speed relays of Nostr. As a longtime Podcasting 2.0 + V4V operator (and “welcoming committee” booster), Chad traces the arc from No Agenda’s time-talent-treasure model through the Alex Jones deplatforming moment that helped catalyze Podcast Index, and onward into Lightning-powered media.

The conversation dives deep into the practical challenges of this union, specifically regarding music curation and the decentralized "discovery problem". Chad and Avi explore the concept of a "Contextual Web of Trust" to replace algorithmic feeds and discuss the technical friction between Keysend and LNURL that hinders artist onboarding. Ultimately, Chad calls for a proliferation of new apps – "more Fountains, more Wavlakes, more StableKrafts" – to give creators true independence from centralized platforms.

Song of the Week: "Everything Will Fall In Its Place" by Look Ma No Cavities.

Stablekraft

V4VMusic.com

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)

Episode 142 is a Nostr year-in-review roundtable with Avi, QW, Vitor Pamplona, and Corndalorian. They reflect on the mid-year “Nostr bear market” in engagement and argue it wasn’t a death spiral, it was infrastructure season: fewer tourists, more plumbers, deeper roots.

Vitor breaks down why user drop-off is normal at this stage, and why 2025 felt like “working on the pipes,” with Nostr expanding beyond Twitter-style clients into a richer set of social shapes (chat, Instagram/TikTok-like experiences, etc.).

The group riffs on Nostr’s culture of resisting ad-driven incentives, celebrates experimentation (like Jumble forks), and spotlights how music has become a real-world “ground game” for Nostr gatherings.

Looking ahead, they’re bullish on 2026 being a Web-of-Trust year (more data, better personalization feeds), plus more creator tooling like zap splits, subscriptions, and AI-accelerated development.

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24 (2nd Edition)

In this episode, Avi sits down with de-commerce builder Eric FJ, creator of Conduit Market, to explore how Nostr and Bitcoin can rebuild the old-school bazaar in protocol form. They dig into NIP-99 product listings, NIP-17 DM-based order flows, and the emerging “infinite product pool” that multiple marketplaces like Shopstr, Plebian Market, and Conduit can all share and filter in their own ways. Along the way, they tackle price discovery vs discovery distortion on Amazon-style platforms, local artisans thriving in a monoculture world, and how web-of-trust, reputation and privacy-preserving messaging could solve the “who do I trust with my address?” problem. They also get practical about business models with zero platform fees, BTC Pay and stablecoins as bridges, and what it will take to make decentralized markets feel as smooth as mainstream e-commerce while staying sovereign.

Conduit Market

Find Eric on Nostr

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi sits down with Aaron of Essex, the Bitcoiner, hairdresser, and music superfan behind Bitcoin Essex and the New Music Nudge Unit.

Aaron shares his 90s-era origin story, from Napster and CDs to discovering Bitcoin and realizing he could help working musicians build parallel rails for their art. He explains how the New Music Nudge Unit works in practice: self-hosting tracks, publishing them once via RSS to dozens of Podcasting 2.0 apps, and routing sats straight to artists through value-for-value. Along the way, he tells onboarding stories of artists like Longy, Fable, Nathan Abbott, Fifty Four Plates, and Hear My Roar, plus the UK’s first Bitcoin-powered gig, Into the Valueverse, and the recent BitFest music night.

The conversation digs into Spotify’s exploitative economics, the thousand-true-fans model, paying artists properly at Bitcoin conferences, and why Bitcoin and Nostr give independent musicians a truly global stage – without labels, gatekeepers, or permission.

New Music Nudge Unit

Wednesday Dec 10th at Peggy's Music Bar

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi sits down with London-based bitcoiner, artist and playwright Psyfer, caretaker of the legendary Cyphermunk House in Bloomsbury. They trace the unlikely origin of the house back to a 10-day Vipassana retreat in rural India, where Psyfer was flooded with images of fiat collapse and Bitcoin art, eventually leading him to turn a four-story Victorian building into a living Bitcoin sanctuary. He describes Cyphermunk as an ever-shifting gallery, bar and salon where sats flow, incense burns, random locals wander in off the street, and culture quietly onboards the curious. The conversation ranges from using shredded fiat as an art medium, to staging a Prometheus-inspired mask play with a million-sat seed phrase hidden in a wordless performance, to building parallel culture in the shadow of the Bank of England and why real walls still matter in an age of surveillance.

Cyphermunk House

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW interviews Sam Means (aka Lightning Store, Wavlake), a musician, father, and entrepreneur, discussing his various projects and perspectives on the music, his band The Format and much more.

The Format Live on Tonight Show : https://youtu.be/5i9GQzPM8G0

The Format Merch : https://www.theformat.com/home/#merch

Hello Merch : https://www.hellomerch.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqOPiYjnUxxk3V9pPFrlG4gLtS1GLWI7swneEYPoE76NQCNS3VB

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi talks with Swiss-German Bitcoin artist Yena, aka Lady Block Jane, about how vivid dreams and a forest vision pulled her into Bitcoin and birthed works like Dressed in Entropy and the mermaid piece I’ll Take Yours Too, who quietly stacks sats from our “boating accidents.” They get into the gritty reality of hauling physical Bitcoin art across borders, the birth of her A2B project in a Swiss tunnel, and the hilariously doomed “laser eyes” performance at a conference. The conversation closes with Yena’s reflections on taking the pressure off monetizing her gift and how Bitcoin art can act as a bridge for people already walking the path toward sound money and deeper meaning.

Yena's Art

Avi's New Book – July 18

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi's First Book – 24

BitFest 10% Discount Code: plebchainradio

Max Hillebrand returns to the show to map the cypherpunk “freedom stack” for real life. He digs into open source hardware and works up the stack to Nostr-native coordination (from relay hygiene to posting CoinJoin rounds). We talk private, scalable group communication – what’s missing, what’s promising, and how mixnets and layered encryption fit. Max makes the case for value-for-value as the funding rail that keeps builders sovereign and aligned with users.

Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ]

Avi Burra's Book 24

BitFest 10% Discount Code: plebchainradio