After more than a decade of struggling to stay afloat, the heritage site of one of the most infamous shock media of the 1990s has rebranded itself into a cryptocurrency company. This means you will no longer be greeted by the warm and welcoming red glow (and the void of darkness beyond) upon visiting Goatse.cx. Instead, you'll find an advertisement for Goatse Coin, a cryptocurrency and bitcoin alternative.

As part of the website's latest effort to rebrand it into something other than a man, bent over and spreading his butt, it is currently accepting email addresses to alert early adopters when the meme-based coin is ready to launch. According to the site description:

“Goatse Coin is a brand new Bitcoin-alternative cryptocurrency that is currently in development by Goatse.cx and will be launched shortly. If you are interested in getting notification at launch, please leave your email below.”

While the prospects of Goatse's rebirth as a digital currency remain unclear, the news has been met by outright pessimism and some cautious optimism from those who remember the beginning of Goatse--the same one that we have knowingly or unknowingly burned into the back of our eyelid--as the site has been swimming in a sea of troubles for well over a decade. The slump began in 2014, after the site was suspended Goatse.cx by the .cx domain registrar, which led its then-anonymous owner to put it up for auction with an asking price of $500,000. The domain continued to change hands over the next six years or so, and in 2010, the site was back up with a new email hosting service, Goatse Mail. But the project never materialized, and the site began redirecting to its web hosting service in 2011.

And what's more, this isn’t Goatse.cx’s first foray into cryptocurrency either. In 2014, Goatse.cx made its first announcement of Goatse Coin, describing it as a new form of cryptocurrency -- though skimping on the details. Following several months speculation, the site announced a partnership with Dogecoin, an internet tipping cryptocurrency that effectively shut down in 2017. Even after the demise of Dogecoin, Goatse.cx wasn’t ready to be sent to a farm upstate yet. According to Motherboard, in June 2017, someone claiming to be the owner of the site put a call out to cryptocoin developers on Bitcointalk.org, which read:

"Hi everyone, its Goatse here, administrator of the famous site goatse.cx

I have a dream of creating a Goatse alt coin and am looking for expressions of interest to launch this[…]

Post in here if you are interested in working with me or PM me. If you hate the idea please feel free to post here also.

I think this will be huge: Goatse Coin

Keen to talk to work with people who have launched a coin before."

As for the future of Goatse Coin, we'll just have to wait and see. But for the time being, Twitter user @isislovecruft put it best:

someone bought the original goatse domain and is making a literal shitcoin, I am dying pic.twitter.com/rtdu9MSJ5H

— isis agora lovecruft (@isislovecruft) August 9, 2017