Along with Mahir, Mr. T Ate My Balls, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, and a pervasive embarrassment about discussing these things in daylight, dedicated early users of the internet were intimately familiar with Goatse.cx, a popular, widely circulated photo of a man’s gaping, beet-red asshole. Goatse.cx was a trauma collectively shared among young people who were making their first tentative forays online, a rite of passage that was unwittingly stumbled upon after clicking on some prankster’s link in a chatroom, or maybe explicitly sought out while working up the nerve to visit Rotten.com. The site—which was, again, just a single, close-up photo of a man’s socketed rectum, splayed for all to gaze into like the Nietzschean abyss—served as introduction for many to the endless, exciting possibilities that the World Wide Web allowed for showing them extremely fucked-up shit. And now it’s apparently being retooled into something every bit as useful: a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency.
Motherboard reports that the newly cleaned-up and safe for work (really) Goatse.cx now redirects to a sign-up page for Goatse Coin, a Bitcoin alternative that’s listed as “currently in development.” Those interested in buying goods and services with a form of digital money linked to a man’s exploded butthole are encouraged to sign up for notifications. Of course, you might be waiting a while: As Motherboard also notes, Goatse Coin has been floated once before in 2014, when Goatse.cx abandoned its plans to create an ass-themed webmail service and similarly announced the impending Goatse Coin. Alas, those promises proved to be as hollow as a certain man’s ravaged insides.
Still, Goatse would be far from the first ridiculous, meme-based “altcoin” or “token” to deeply-penetrating-piggyback off Bitcoin; the internet is currently awash in these easily created imitators, everything from TacoCoin to JuggaloCoin to WankCoin. With more and more hackers and even members of the “alt-right” proclaiming Bitcoin the only reliable currency for our uncertain future, much like those subtly pulsating intestinal walls, that pace shows no signs of slackening. In any case, just knowing that Goatse.cx is still out there somewhere is strangely comforting, an old friend openly beckoning “hello” from across the epic span of years and anuses.