Three weeks ago, Andy Baio, a technologist and former CTO of Kickstarter, found the Bitcoin white paper stashed in a nest of folders on his MacBook.
Now, Apple has reportedly removed the white paper from its most recent beta for Macs operating system, according to 9to5mac. Developers reportedly confirmed the removal of the nine-page PDF that outlines the design of the worlds most popular cryptocurrency after the third beta for macOS 13.4 Ventura was released on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fortune reached out to developers with access to the beta, but none immediately responded.
Previously, the PDF was accessible on any post-2018 Mac operating system, according to Baio. Ive asked over a dozen Mac-using friends to confirm, and it was there for every one of them, he wrote in a blog post detailing his discovery. He stumbled upon the white paper, authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious and anonymous founder of Bitcoin, when he was trying to scan documents from a combination printer-scanner onto his computer.
Baio wrote a quick command in Terminal, or application to explore a Macs file system through text commands, to pull up the white paper. The paper is also accessible through Finder, a Macs file management system. Fortune was able to independently confirm its location on a recently released MacBook Pro.
While its unclear why Apple removed the white paper, which some crypto enthusiasts see as a quasi-religious screed, Baio has previously speculated to Fortune that its inclusion on Macs operating systems was the work of one engineer.
In its early history, Apple developers used to hide Easter eggs in the operating system, he previously told Fortune. But I get the impression this wasnt something that management would have approved ofbasically the decision of a single engineer.
An anonymous source told Baio that that someone at Apple flagged the existence of Nakamotos manifesto on Macs operating systems, but the same engineer who had allegedly placed it was assigned with its removal.
With its reported removal from the most recent beta for Macs operating system, perhaps the media storm that accompanied the white papers discovery finally moved Apples higher-ups to delete it from all Macs.
