The Current Owner of the ‘Goatse’ Website Wants It to Be a Household Name

If the last time you read the word "Goatse," it stood for an internet meme involving a man holding his ass open, you might want to sit down. There've been some changes.

The domain, which originally went online in 1999, has reportedly changed hands several times. The latest iteration of the Goatse.cx website, where the infamous image was once hosted, is a launch page advertising a cryptocurrency fundraiser for a bespoke Goatse digital token. The ostensible reason: to incentivize dank meme creation online. Before that, though, the site attempted pivoting to an email service and then to vocally supporting a joke cryptocurrency called Dogecoin.

If the person running the current iteration of the website—whom Motherboard reached over email—is telling the truth, then the same person has been behind the most recent of these rather surprising turns for a website that was once the scourge of the early web.

Some of his or her story checks out: They say they're Australian and that they bought the Goatse.cx domain in 2008. The site changed hands in 2008 to an Australian man according to a historical Whois lookup and is currently owned by Hello Enterprises, an Australian company. Regardless, they emailed me from the email address "administrator@goatse.cx," so they definitely seem to run the site now.

To find out what it's been like to allegedly run the most notorious website on the internet for more than a decade after its gross-out prime, and what's behind the current pivot to cryptocurrencies, read on.

Motherboard: First, is this cryptocurrency thing a joke?
Goatse.cx: Goatse Coin is most certainly not a joke. The idea is real, the technology is real. I dare say we are significantly more progressed than the vast majority of ICOs that are being launched. We have a coherent and well thought-out whitepaper written by Goatse Nakamoto himself that solves a serious problem (the decline of dank memes), and we also have a GitHub that shows we have professional devs working on this.

The idea may be light hearted in the sense that it deals with memes and is related to the world's most famous shock site, but we have definitely put a lot of effort into making sure the idea and technology works.

So… who are you? How did you gain control of the Goatse domain and when?
I am an Australian technology consultant. I don't want to use my real name because I don't want to be associated with Goatse forever on Google. I bought the domain name in about 2008 after a night out for around 8,000 euros from Sedo.com. That is a true story, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have subsequently put up a lot of things on the site, it gets a reasonable amount of traffic. In 2012 I launched Goatse Mail and sold around 500 Goatse.cx email accounts.

Read More: Someone Hacked a Billboard in Atlanta to Display Goatse

When did the idea of a Goatse coin come about? Is there any relation to the Goatse coin that was briefly advertised on the page some years ago?
The Goatse Coin idea came up during the crypto pumping season of 2014. I really liked what Dogecoin was doing and felt that Goatse could go even further and become a household name. I have always wanted Goatse to be more well known and potentially used by people in everyday life. I want it to become a dictionary word that people use without even thinking, like Google for search or Hoover for vacuuming. I found some really talented [developers] from posting on Bitcointalk, Reddit, and 4chan. The guys I am working with are professionals currently working in industry but do not want to be named. Hopefully the GitHub proves this.

Why do memes need this to be more dank?
For years there has been an unnatural separation between the meme spawning pools (i.e. image boards) and sites on which people consume the memes (Facebook, Reddit, etc). This has created a scenario where the people creating the memes are not getting the recognition they deserve. They are basically providing dank [original content] to content haciendas like Facebook and getting nothing in return.

To us, these people are elite artists and deserve to be treated like rock stars [who] arguably contribute more to popular culture today than celebrated mainstream artists. We want these people working full time on dank memes and finally getting the recognition they deserve in the form of Goatse Coins (and fame if that is what they want.)

Do you have a target for how much you want to raise during the ICO, and what will you use the funds for?
We have seen that there are ICOs that don't have any memes ICO-ing for 100 mil+ so we are quite sure that our ICO deserves more than this. Like all the other ICOs, we will be using it for development, promotion and lambos [Lamborghinis].

As far as I know, Kirk Johnson has never been confirmed as the "Goatse man," so why set coins aside for him?
Kirk is the Goatse Man. Go to his PornHub account, I think user KirkJ. There is no doubt that is him—compare the hands and the body markings. Kirk created something that changed people's lives and we want him to participate in this. I want to get him on the Goatse board and to get involved in the community.

Of course, prior to releasing the coins we would like Kirk to prove once and for all that he is the Goatse Man. This would then be assessed by the Goatse board.

What do you think about criticisms that say the ICO market is oversaturated and over-hyped , and that Goatse coin is the latest example of silliness?
You have articulated our thoughts exactly. I do not disagree at all—the vast majority of these ICOs are stupid ideas that will end in tears. Of course Goatse Coin is not one of those projects. Like I have said—the irony here is that Goatse Coin has a better idea, a stronger brand and a better team than 99 percent of the ICOs out there today.

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