The digital copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper was an Easter egg that was located earlier this month embedded within a test scanner app on macOS. But Apple has now removed it from the latest beta version of its operating system.
With the removal of the test scanner app called Virtual Scanner II from the beta, the Bitcoin white paper – along with all the other elements it was bundled up with – is also gone.
- According to a report, the document will no longer be available once users update to the MacOS Ventura 13.4 beta 3 that was rolled out to developers on Tuesday.
- On the other hand, users who haven’t updated their Mac to the latest beta can still find the file by running a command.
- In a blog post on April 5th, an American technologist Andy Baio revealed stumbling upon the Bitcoin white paper while trying to fix his wireless printer.
- He went on to add that the whitepaper’s PDF copy could have been added to the system with macOS Mojave, which was launched in 2018.
- As the story gained significant traction, Baio later updated,
“A little bird tells me that someone internally filed it as an issue nearly a year ago, assigned to the same engineer who put the PDF there in the first place, and that person hasn’t taken action or commented on the issue since. They’ve indicated it will likely be removed in future versions.”
- The discovery prompted several conspiracy theories, including speculation about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Subsequently, the controversial computer scientist and self-proclaimed “Bitcoin creator of Bitcoin,” Craig Wright, accused Apple of violating copyright laws.