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Apple Has Hidden Bitcoin Whitepaper in macOS and No One Knows Why

The manifesto has seemingly been shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.

Developer and Waxy.org's writer Andy Baio has recently made a baffling and somewhat confusing discovery that made the Internet scratch its head trying to understand the meaning behind it. While fixing a printer, the writer discovered a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper hidden away in macOS files by Apple, serving as a sample document for a device called Virtual Scanner II, which may or may not power the Import from iPhone feature. According to Baio, the PDF has apparently been shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.

If you are on macOS 10.14 or later, you can type in the following command to Terminal to access the PDF:

open /System/Library/Image\

Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

"Of all the documents in the world, why was the Bitcoin whitepaper chosen? Is there a secret Bitcoin maxi working at Apple? The filename is “simpledoc.pdf” and it’s only 184 KB. Maybe it was just a convenient, lightweight multipage PDF for testing purposes, never meant to be seen by end users," commented the writer. "There’s virtually nothing about this online. As of this moment, there are only a couple references to Virtual Driver II or the whitepaper file in Google results. Namely, this Twitter thread from designer Joshua Dickens in November 2020, who also spotted the whitepaper PDF, inspiring this Apple Community post in April 2021. And that’s it!"

You can read Baio's original post here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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