Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper on the Bitcoin network is one of the most significant documents in the history of cryptocurrency. Now, it seems that the whitepaper is hiding in plain sight on every modern version of the operating system for Apple’s Mac computers.
In a blog post published on April 5th, technologist Andy Baio revealed that a PDF of the Bitcoin white paper has “apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.”
Baio stumbled upon the white paper accidentally while attempting to fix his printer and scan a document with a wireless scanner. Baio noticed a device called “Virtual Scanner II” that he had never seen before. By default, Virtual Scanner II showed a photo, but when Baio changed the media type from “Photo” to “Document,” Nakamoto’s white paper appeared.
Baio created a prompt to use in Terminal, a command-line interface for macOS, so others could bring up the white paper easily. In his blog post, Baio claimed that the file is found on “every version of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura), but isn’t in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier.” Baio also shared a Twitter thread from designer Joshua Dickens, who also found the white paper.
Despite the fact that the Bitcoin white paper has apparently been hiding on Apple’s Mac computers for several years, there is virtually nothing about this online. Baio speculated in his post that the white paper was “just a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end-users.”
It’s unclear why Nakamoto’s white paper is shipped with modern versions of macOS, but this discovery has piqued the interest of cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide. The Bitcoin white paper is widely regarded as the blueprint for the entire cryptocurrency industry, and its discovery on Apple’s Mac computers is sure to generate significant interest.
