Bitcoin white paper quietly removed by Apple from latest MacOS beta: Report

The world’s largest tech company has quietly removed the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper from the latest beta version of its operating system upgrade.

On April 25, the Apple-focused news site 9to5Mac reported the Big Tech firm had removed a test scanner app called Virtual Scanner II in the latest MacOS Ventura 13.4 beta, and subsequently, the Bitcoin white paper is gone.

As reported by Cointelegraph, an April 5 blog post from technologist Andy Baio revealed that a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper PDF had shipped with every copy of MacOS for the past five years.

The document was found within Virtual Scanner II in macOS. Nobody knew why it was there, but it was suspected to be “just a joke among Apple engineers,” the report added.

Other wilder conspiracy theories have emerged, such as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs being Satoshi Nakamoto, Apple Insider reported.

Apple removes original Bitcoin whitepaper from the latest macOS Ventura beta https://t.co/YG1OlDJNZy by @filipeesposito— 9to5Mac (@9to5mac) April 25, 2023

However, Apple clearly didn’t see the funny side and has now removed the document from the latest version of the Mac operating system.

Related: Apple's outside payments ban upheld as unlawful in likely win for NFTs and crypto

The white paper was in a folder within the Image Capture app and other seemingly random files such as PDFs and images. 9to5Mac commented:

“This pretty much confirms our original theory that both the Bitcoin white paper and the internal tool were never meant to be found by regular users.”

In a related development, a California court has ruled the tech giant violated state competition laws by preventing developers from using alternative in-app payment methods. In true Apple fashion, the firm tried to force NFT creators and developers to use its own payments platform, where they would be charged a 30% commission.

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