Bitcoin White Paper Found Hidden Inside Mac Computers, To 'Steve Jobs Was Satoshi Nakamoto' Theory

Bitcoin is again making headlines, but this time, for an entirely different thing.

The famous cryptocurrency is at the center of a strange discovery made by Andy Baio, a technologist who shared in a blog post that apparently, all macOS major updates starting with Mojave (10.14) from 2018 and up to the newest Ventura (13.3) version contain a hidden copy of the Bitcoin white paper.

The Bitcoin white paper (PDF) was originally written by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, and on Apple computers, it goes by the name simpledoc.pdf.

The file is hidden, can be revealed using the the Image Capture utility, by selecting the 'Virtual Scanner II' from the device list, and set the Media to 'Document', and DPI to 72.

The file can also be accessed via the terminal, with the open /System/Library/Image\Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf command.

Baio explained that he found the hidden file when he attempted to scan a document with a wireless scanner with his Mac computer.

But at that time, a device called Virtual Scanner II appeared. This was something he had “never seen before.”

By default, Virtual Scanner II showed a photo, but when Baio changed the media type, Nakamoto’s white paper appeared.

"I wasn't looking for the Bitcoin paper!" Baio exclaimed. "I was just trying to fix my printer!"

Just like all people out there, Baio quickly went to the internet to do his research, and found “virtually nothing about this online.”

What he found, was a November 2020 Twitter thread from designer Joshua Dickens, who also found the white paper. At that time, the person also found a photo from Treasure Island in San Francisco with a blue wall and the number 6.

At that time, all of these didn't raise the alarm.

Notably, this is because Apple has a history of hiding files on its products for users to uncover.

For instance, the game "Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time" was once hidden on Apple’s first CD-ROM, and the tech giant remained secretive about the fact even after it was discovered.

But this time, things went differently, as the revelation fueled wild theories across the internet that the mysterious creator of the world's biggest cryptocurrency may have been Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple and tech visionary.

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin, and then implemented the technology as an open source code, Nakamoto released it in January 2009.

Bitcoin, symbolized as "BTC", uses a peer-to-peer system where users can transact directly without the need of an intermediary. As a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is described as the first decentralized digital currency.

In January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence with the release of the first Bitcoin client and the issuance of the first Bitcoins. Nakamoto was the the person mining the first block of Bitcoins ever, which had a reward of 50 Bitcoins.

Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million Bitcoins. Before stopping his involvement with the cryptocurrency.

Since then, Nakamoto vanished from the internet.

Baio's revelation fueled fresh speculation about Nakamoto, the mysterious Bitcoin inventor who has never been identified.

His revelation went viral because unlike Joshua Dickens' discovery, Baio's finding managed to grab the attention of some some prominent players in the cryptocurrency world.

"Was Steve Jobs actually Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of #bitcoin?" tweeted Lark Davis, a Bitcoin investor and blogger with more than 1 million followers. "Plus Satoshi disappear in December 2010, and then Jobs passed in October 2011. The timelines fit..."

While Nakamoto's disappearance happened around the same time Jobs died, the white paper appeared on Mac computers seven years after Jobs died, making it impossible for him to be the one who inserted the document into the operating system.

Self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright said a few words about this.

Replying to a Twitter user who asked if Apple might be “in breach of copyright” for storing the Bitcoin white paper on its computers, the Australian computer scientist said: "Yes."

He claimed that by storing the white paper means that Apple is violating copyright laws, and because of that, he hinted at a possible legal battle against Apple.

The computer scientist has also argued that his intellectual property rights have been infringed upon by Bitcoin spin-offs derived from the cryptocurrency since he created the original blockchain.

He has also filed numerous lawsuits over this matter.

The most notable lawsuit he was involved in, was back in 2021, when Wright went against Bitcoin.org website in order to have its copy of the Bitcoin white paper removed from the website, claiming that it violates copyright laws.

In 2022, he also sued a number of cryptocurrency exchanges over their misrepresentation of "Bitcoin Core" as the actual Bitcoin.

Wright has argued that the real BTC is his Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).

Additionally, Wright has also a number of developers to obtain their BTCs.

For more than many years Wright has claimed that he is the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite the numerous claims and suggestions, the cryptocurrency community has long been skeptical of Wright’s claims.

Wright has also faced legal challenges over his claims in the past.