Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper introducing the Bitcoin (BTC) network apparently lurks inside every modern version of the operating system for Apple’s Mac computers.
A blog from April 5 mail Technologist Andy Baio revealed that a PDF of the Bitcoin white paper “apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.”
Baio told Cointelegraph that he was “just trying to fix my printer” and scan a document with a wireless scanner when a device called “Virtual Scanner II” appeared that he had “never seen before.”
By default, Virtual Scanner II displayed a photo, but when Baio changed the media type from “Photo” to “Document”, Nakamoto’s white paper appeared.
“I wasn’t looking for the role of Bitcoin!” Bai exclaimed. “I was just trying to fix my printer!”
In his post, Baio said that there is “virtually nothing about this online.” He shared a November 2020 Twitter thread from designer Joshua Dickens, who also found the whitepaper, which Baio used to find the file’s location.
Strangely, there is also a PDF of the original Bitcoin white paper: pic.twitter.com/JjPnI4fyzc
—Josh D (@schwa23) November 28, 2020
Baio created a prompt to use in Terminal, a command-line interface for macOS, so others could easily open the whitepaper.
“I started asking other Mac-using friends if they could confirm it, and they all did,” he said.
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The indicator successfully opened the Bitcoin white paper on three different Apple Mac devices tested by Cointelegraph.
In his blog post, Baio claimed that the file is found in “all versions of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura), but not in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier.”
It is unknown why Nakamoto’s white paper ships with modern versions of macOS. Baio speculated in his post that it was “just a convenient and lightweight multi-page PDF for testing purposes, never intended to be viewed by end users.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Apple for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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