I had this problem also. The solution was to delete the peers.dat file and add this to the goldcoin.conf file:
addnode=162.243.57.246
addnode=84.200.17.249
addnode=84.200.84.93
addnode=174.53.218.230
addnode=54.201.183.106
addnode=72.78.100.7
addnode=217.31.181.40
addnode=81.2.95.132
addnode=99.253.2.126
addnode=98.119.205.73
addnode=75.129.241.242
addnode=174.126.209.100
addnode=83.5.128.59
addnode=98.111.146.158
addnode=216.232.230.91
addnode=71.192.130.60
Some of us are having problems with the IRC discovery mechanism.
