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 Mac’s operating system, according to 9to5mac. Developers reportedly confirmed the removal of the nine-page PDF that outlines the design of the world’s 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. Brandon Butch, a popular social media personality who reviews and explores Apple products, confirmed to Fortune that the white paper was removed when he accessed the beta.
Previously, the PDF was accessible on any post-2018 Mac operating system, according to Baio. “I’ve 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, the application that enables users to explore a Mac’s file system through text commands, to pull up the white paper. The paper is also accessible through Finder, the Mac’s file management system. Fortune was able to independently confirm its location on a recently released MacBook Pro.
While it’s 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 Mac’s 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 wasn’t something that management would have approved of—basically the decision of a single engineer.”
An anonymous source told Baio that someone at Apple flagged the existence of Nakamoto’s manifesto on Mac’s operating systems, but that the same engineer who had allegedly placed it was assigned with its removal.
With its reported removal from the most recent beta for Mac’s operating system, perhaps the media storm that accompanied the white paper’s discovery finally moved Apple’s higher-ups to delete it from all Macs.
Update, April 26, 2023: This article has been updated with confirmation from Brandon Butch that the Bitcoin white paper was not on the Mac operating system’s most recent beta when he accessed it.
