Here’s why macOS has the Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in its files

It’s not unusual to have a few easter eggs hidden in operating systems, and it’s no different with Apple’s. However, some users recently discovered something intriguing. Every copy of macOS has the original Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in its internal files. While this got attention on social media, the fact that this document is there in macOS probably doesn’t mean much. And here’s why.

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Your Mac may have a copy of the original Bitcoin whitepaper

This isn’t the first time someone has noticed this, but the fact that macOS has the original Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in its internal files has gotten attention once again after developer Andy Baio wrote an article about it this week. According to Baio, he was trying to fix his printer when he found a PDF copy of the whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, considered to be the person who invented Bitcoin.

The developer asked other friends to check if the file could also be found on their Macs. To his surprise, they all confirmed that the Bitcoin whitepaper was there in macOS. The file seems to have been added to the system with macOS Mojave, which was released in 2018, and is still present in the latest version of macOS Ventura.

If your Mac is running one of these macOS versions, you can check the file yourself by running the following command in Terminal:

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

But why is this file there and what does it represent? For people creating theories on the web about Apple and Bitcoin, I’m sorry to say that the existence of this file in macOS has no special meaning.

It’s just an internal tool from Apple

The file is part of the Image Capture app, which comes pre-installed on every Mac and lets users scan images from an external scanner. Of course, the app is also related to how macOS handles printers – which is probably why Baio ended up finding the file. And here’s something to keep in mind.

This file was never intended to be found by normal users. It is located inside a folder with assets used for internal testing by Apple engineers. The same folder also contains other random images and PDF files that are used to simulate the process of scanning and exporting documents and images with the app without actually needing a scanner.

So why use the original Bitcoin whitepaper? Well, it’s hard to say for sure, but this was probably just an inside joke by Apple engineers working on this tool. Apple’s internal software is full of references and jokes. After all, engineers never expect that users will access these files.

The most likely explanation is that the engineers didn’t bother to remove this tool from the final macOS build because it doesn’t have any sensitive information in it. But of course, it’s not every day that you find out that Apple hides a file about Bitcoin in its operating system.

Baio says he has heard from a source that the Apple engineers knew the Bitcoin whitepaper was there in macOS and never took action to remove it. But given the repercussions on the web, Apple will probably end up removing it with a future update.

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