FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Goatse Keeps Trying to Make Money With Cryptocurrency

Goatse.cx's latest play with virtual money is selling pixel space for ether, the Ethereum blockchain's native token.
goatse
Imahes: Goatse.cx, Shutterstock, PlusPNG. Composition: Author

Goatse.cx, a website famous for once hosting an image of a man holding his asshole wide open, keeps trying to make a buck in the comparatively gross world of cryptocurrency.

The first whispers of a cryptocurrency associated with the Goatse.cx domain bubbled up in 2014, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the site’s homepage announced the impending birth of a Goatse Coin. At the time, the site’s administrator told me he hoped to raise more than $100 million by selling the coins, and that the plan was to launch a kind of decentralized meme factory.

Advertisement

It’s unclear if that ever fully materialized—the Goatse twitter account referenced giving away Goatse Coins and teased an app in March of last year—but it appears as though Goatse.cx has shifted gears once again to try and make some virtual cash.

Now, the Goatse.cx homepage lets anybody buy a patch of pixels in exchange for ether (the native token of the Ethereum blockchain) and fill it with an ad of their choosing.

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

The “Thousand Ether Goatse,” as the project is called, is a “fork” (meaning it copied code from an existing open-source project) of a site called the “Thousand Ether Homepage,” which is the exact same thing but not Goatse. In turn, the “Thousand Ether Homepage” was inspired by the “Million Dollar Homepage,” a website created in 2005 that sold pixels for $1 each.

“Thousand Ether Goatse” was announced on Twitter in November of last year. With 6,000 pixels currently sold, according to the Goatse.cx homepage, at .001 ETH (currently worth around $104) per pixel, the person behind the site has presumably already made around $624.

As for what the person behind the site plans to do with all of that cash, according to the FAQ, they want to “buy a lambo,” as in a Lamborghini. Maybe the Hot Wheels version?

I reached out to the Goatse.cx administrator for comment on the site’s latest venture, but they weren’t immediately available.

From gaping assholes to cryptocurrency—oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.