Apple to Remove Embedded Bitcoin Whitepaper
CUPERTINO, CA – Apple will remove the Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in the operating system of every Macintosh computer shipped since 2017, according to a report by 9to5Mac. The nine-page paper was discovered in April 2021 by a user named bernd178, who posted the information on the MacOS Community Forum.
The whitepaper was found buried within the Image Capture Utility of MacOS, behind a function called Virtual Scanner II that disabled it by default. Inside Virtual Scanner II, users found an image of a PDF copy of the whitepaper. The discovery went viral earlier this year after a post by technologist Andy Baio.
The upcoming software update, which will remove the whitepaper, was revealed by a study of the beta version of MacOS Ventura 13.4. suggests that the whitepaper may have been placed in the system for testing purposes, with no intention of being discovered by everyday users.
While the Apple developer community didn't appear to be that impressed when the whitepaper was first discovered in 2021, the presence of the whitepaper in the operating system was seen as a tribute to the growing influence of Bitcoin.
