The Bitcoin (BTC) network’s original white paper, authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, is reportedly hidden within all modern versions of Apple’s Mac operating system.
Andy Baio, a technologist, disclosed in an April 5 blog post that a PDF of the Bitcoin white paper has been included with every macOS copy since Mojave in 2018.
Baio only stumbled upon the PDF when trying to fix his printer and scan a document with a wireless scanner that revealed a device he’d never seen before called “Virtual Scanner II.”
When Baio changed the media type from “Photo” to “Document,” Nakamoto’s white paper appeared.
In his post, Baio stated that there is very little information about it online, and he shared a November 2020 Twitter thread from designer Joshua Dickens, who also discovered the whitepaper, to help locate the file.
Weirdly, there’s also a PDF of the original Bitcoin white paper: pic.twitter.com/JjPnI4fyzc
— Josh D (@schwa23) November 28, 2020
Baio designed a prompt to use in Terminal, a command-line interface for macOS, so that others can easily access the whitepaper.
“I asked other Mac-using friends if they could confirm it, and all of them could,” he added.
In his blog post, Baio revealed the file existed in “every version of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura), but not in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier.” The reason why Nakamoto’s white paper is shipped with modern versions of macOS remains unknown, but Baio speculates that it was included for “testing purposes, [and] never meant to be seen by end-users.”
Apple has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
