Apple Will Remove Bitcoin White Paper From Its Computers: Report

• Apple likely to remove bitcoin white paper from computer system, reports say.
• A work ticket to remove the paper had already been submitted, an Apple source told Andy Baio, who discovered the paper.
• The beta version of macOS Ventura 13.4 does not have the digital token’s manifest, according to AppleInsider.

Apple is likely to remove the hidden bitcoin whitepaper from its computers in the next update to macOS, reports say.

According to a report from AppleInsider, the manifesto of the digital token written by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto has been removed in the beta version of macOS Ventura 13.4, less than a month after it was accidentally discovered by tech blogger Andy Baio in early April.

Baio told Decrypt that the white paper will likely be removed in future software updates, citing an Apple source. The source said a developer work ticket had been submitted to remove the paper and was assigned to the same person who put the white paper into the software system.

The paper, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” is widely regarded as bitcoin’s foundational document, laying out the working mechanisms that enable the digital token to function as a currency.

Baio helped the white paper go viral earlier this month after he accidentally discovered the PDF, which appeared to have shipped with all Apple computers since 2018.

“Of all the documents in the world, why was the Bitcoin Whitepaper chosen? Is there a secret Bitcoin maxi working at Apple?” Baio said in a blog post at the time. “Perhaps it was just a convenient, lightweight multi-page PDF file for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end users.”

The newspaper’s discovery led to theories that Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs could have been Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin who withdrew his presence from the internet in late 2010, around the same time Jobs died. But there’s no way Jobs himself placed the paper in the system, observers say, as Apple’s co-founder died in 2011, seven years before the paper first appeared on Apple computers.

Bitcoin rose to $29,772 on Wednesday. Despite tanking in 2022 amid rising interest rates, the cryptocurrency has rebounded nearly 80% since the start of the year.

Curious Mac users can type the following message into the terminal program to load the PDF of the white paper:

open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf