Bitcoin Forum

Just in: As the title says, apple has now hidden the bitcoin whitepaper from its latest macOS ventura 13.4 beta 3.
With every institution trying to get their hands on bitcoin, does this new action from apple mean that they are not much interested in btc? Why are they trying to hide the generational financial innovation? I would like to know what thoughts you guys got in your mind about this.
Source link: https://news.coincu.com/183946-apple-removes-bitcoin-whitepaper-from-macos/ (https://news.coincu.com/183946-apple-removes-bitcoin-whitepaper-from-macos/)

I don't know why it was there in the first place. It's a cool easter egg, but I don't think it would've brought more people to crypto. Those who know were just happy to see it, the ones who weren't didn't even care.

We can assume that someone from Apple put the Bitcoin Whitepaper in MacOs without informing Apple officials. That's why Apple never announced that MacOs have Bitcoin Whitepaper in them. Nobody knew it was there for a couple of years. When people discovered this, Apple must ask their engineers who did that a couple of years ago. I don't know what happened, but maybe Apple officials didn't like it, and now they want to remove it from their future MacOs. Don't count; I am right here. It's all based on my assumption.

I didn't notice that having Bitcoin whitepaper in the first place changes their stance, so I don't see why removing it would have any consequence whatsoever, or that it has any deeper meaning.

Apple giant company Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper inclusion in their MacOS quite some days ago gave a confidence in Bitcoin in the minds of Bitcoin investors. But it remains to be seen how the removal of the Bitcoin White Paper from Apple MacOS in various news today will react to Bitcoin investors. However, I don't think Apple's removal of the Bitcoin White Paper will have much of a negative impact on the Bitcoin market.

Seems reasonable, but if really so, I wonder how such a thing would slip through their security though. I mean apple seems to be quite strict about almost anything that relates to their products.

- Maybe we can also assume that apple wants to play it safe and not get into any biases that may affect the popularity of their products or maybe they have another plan in mind or something. Whichever the case, it didn't really serve much purpose for the majority of apple users anyway so maybe apple just found it useless to keep and just decided to get rid of it.

Bitcoin Whitepaper has been there for a couple of years now. The funny thing is nobody noticed that Bitcoin Whitepaper was there. Or maybe Apple users saw a document but didn't know what document it was. I don't know how much confidence it gave to Bitcoin investors. But, Whitepaper removal news won't create many effects in the market. Investors like MicroStrategy will continue investing in Bitcoin until infinite time. They have been accumulating Bitcoin for a long time now. Currently, MicroStrategy holds 140,000 Bitcoins, which will continue accumulating.

Here is why I think It won't affect the market. China has Banned Bitcoin a couple of times so far. They banned Bitcoin transactions, and They Banned Bitcoin Mining. What happened? We have seen some fear in the market, which recovered over time. It was big news. Apple never adopted Bitcoin as a payment method. So, just removing the whitepaper doesn't make any changes.

Maybe its not supposedly be there but needed to be remove cause its not officially set there. Why would Apple remove something valuable information as this. We all knew how many is their customers. Imagine if those people see and read the bitcoin whitepaper then they defintely add to some bullish reason for being involve on blockchain and bitcoin. For sure not so many apple users are familiar with it yet. So putting it up there is good choice but removing it maybe Apply isnt just as fan of bitcoin.

How many of us here know about this thing that they were having whitepaper in mac systems from past five years? Actually it was under the app Virtual Scanner II which they have removed so it's also gone with it but I don't think it has anything to do with it but if we start making some irrelevant connections it won't be good.The statement also shows the app and Bitcoin whitepaper were not found by regular users so no point in adding or removing it.

Quite a logical assumption. That's what I thought when I saw the title of this thread.

Probably, it was a joke of one of the developers (or it was a bitcoin fan) with the placement of whitepaper in MacOS. If this story had not received wide publicity, then Apple probably would not even have paid attention to all this. But after the media found out about the whitepaper in MacOS, the company's management had no choice but to decide to remove it so as not to be associated with bitcoin.

If Apple were interested in btc, they would have announced this long ago and added it to their Apple Store as a payment method. Perhaps they are stopped by the issue of regulation. You should ask them yourself. Nobody in the media has done this yet?


The highlighted question is ill-posed. There is no motive in their actions to hide it. Apple has the right to do with their products what they want, that is, add or remove any materials.

I really don't know why, the possibility crosses my mind that maybe because of the hostile campaign the US government is doing against Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, a huge company like Apple wants to get away from any kind of trouble with the government. Maybe this is just a guess, I don't know.

In any case, whatever the real reason behind Apple removing the Bitcoin white paper, I don't think it will have any effect on Bitcoin. Bitcoin has become too strong to be affected by such things.

Why was it even there to begin with? It's a cool thing to have on the Mac, yes, but essentially it does nothing to the OS nor to Apple itself. It might have invited some curious enthusiasts or onboard some hardcore crypto fans but that's it. Also, this could even bring them into some trouble as this could be seen as Apple posing to be a contributor or 'enabler' of cryptocurrencies in a way or two.

Whatever the reason of it being there, I have no idea. The Whitepaper being removed on their OS isn't really that of a news to the actual market at all. It's a nice little interesting tidbit, but doesn't equate to much in the grand scheme of things.

Whatever the reason maybe for Apple to remove the white paper from their latest version of macOS, it will not directly or indirectly affect the stance of bitcoin. At least not everyone even know it was there before this news was published. And this is not such a big news that will draw the attention to or away from the use of bitcoin.

We can’t say the reason for this, but I’m sure there’s definitely a reason behind this. One can assume that they’re trying to stay away from promoting or advertising bitcoin through their products, which may feel as though they’re helping the adoption of it, that may cause harm to their brand in the future because of government strict regulations on its use.

If you read the complete blog, you will understand it was initially added with an internal tool called “VirtualScanner.app.” This tool allowed Apple engineers to simulate scanning and exporting documents and images without a scanner. So they used Bitcoin's PDF to do all sorts of operations on this internal tool and indeed it's funny.

It was added to the MacOS in 2018 and got removed in the latest update however this was just a cool joke from the engineers. Most of them are surely invested in Crypto and they just wanted to link Apple x Bitcoin to increase the price of Bitcoin which they were HODLing haha. ** just speculating **

It was actually renamed to simpledoc.pdf and I didn't see any non-engineer ever find this stuff out and it's crazy how they pulled this out overall. Great stuff by people at Apple.
Once again I would say, them removing it from MacOS isn't something bad for Bitcoin. Instead it should make you wonder why it was there at first place. :)

I guess nobody among the apple officials knew about the insertion of bitcoin white paper into Apple. For some years,it was unnoticed but only few apple users and the engineers who put it in there knew about it. This hasn't added to bitcoin adoption from my understanding, and removing it won't also affect bitcoin adoption. It is clear to people that bitcoin is the new currency that can resist inflation and it cannot be controlled by a third party. Maybe Apple got rid of bitcoin white paper base on they are selling the product all over the world,including the countries that banned bitcoin and the ones that adopted bitcoin. Let it not be a barrier to them in sales. Since the VirtualScanner.app has been removed, bitcoin white paper is gone too, no worries they are into business.

Actually I just found out about this not too long ago and it's quite interesting. We don't know whether they purposely put it there or they don't know about it as well. But maybe since a lot of people are discovering about it already, many speculations and assumptions are also emerging about the relation of Bitcoin and apple, and why is it there that could affect their image so they just decided to remove it? Also, it's not a secret anymore since it was revealed and many users already knew about it.

Not hidden but has entirely removed it.

I don't think so but it's not just their thing to add that into their latest versions.

They're a tech company and as a corporation and management, they've got other things to look upon, and having bitcoin's whitepaper isn't part of their thing. But, with their Apple Pay, in many exchanges it's possible to buy bitcoin with it and that's why I think that they're not really interested in it if so, they should have banned those types of payments through AP.

I'm not even aware about those whitepaper from Mac. I am browsing TikTok and seen a video talking about apple containing those data from Bitcoin. You'll have to decipher it for you to open the paper and it's not that easy as he shows the process. I think one of the reason of deleting it, is that it might be confidential that are not open to public that's why someone put it in there that you'll have to decode it first. In short, it might be illegal that those paper are in the files of Mac it might be a member in the Apple secretly insert those data.

This is my second time to read the assumption that a member of the apple development team had inserted the Bitcoin white paper into the apple codes unknown to the CEO and other executives.
That they might have later discovered it and decided to remove it.

I find that story so folly because, before a particular code or protocol is updated in the apple device. There are many people that will review it and check if there is bug. So there is no how only one individual will be able to sneak in a couple of codes, which includes the bitcoin white paper into the apple software.

The whitepaper is not code. It is 1 document amongst many. Not being code means that there is no bug or dependencies review done to check it. The paper not being associated with any built-in MAC OS functions or apps also means that there was no documentation review or updates to it.

So yes, it was simply an Easter egg that someone planted long ago.

It was expected to happen, to be honest.
As others have said, the White Papers probably got there because the actions of those software engineers who were into Bitcoin and needed it to perform some testing on their software.

If Apple allowed that document to further stay in their OS, some investors and the community could take that as a soft signal of Apple being bullish on Bitcoin or even something more crazy, like Apple actually having some holdings.

Apple is a blue chip stock and part of several average indicators for the USA economy and the retirement plans of people, powerful Wall street money would not be very happy with Apple being pro Bitcoin and would seize the opportunity to FUD their stock, among other things, using the environmental talking point. Just speculation.

This was a conservative movement by Apple, so they won't risk it.

Tim Cook literally is on record personally saying he owns bitcoin. The Whitepaper on all Macs was probably uploaded by a rogue employee, a bitcoin maxi doing a mild troll. I wouldn’t put it past Apple coming out & publicly saying they have bitcoin on their balance sheet in the next few years. It’s kinda unprofessional to have the Whitepaper on there though so I understand why it was removed.

Well duh, what else did you expect after the news became public and viral at the same time?

They don't want to look like they're endorsing Bitcoin or anything, so they were pretty much forced to make this move from a PR standpoint. Doesn't really have anything to do with Tim or other top brass TBH.

My instant reaction is that this is another example of bloatware in an OS. I hate Apple for their politics and the way they treatr their sheepish customers, so I'm not sure I understand where the white paper was located.

Have Bitcoin whitepaper been part of Apple macOS all along I never noticed that and this is the first time I am hearing of that, if Apple decides to remove it from their OS it then means that there is an external change since there is no point having Bitcoin whitepaper included in the first place.

So to me, this does not mean anything significant to me and the rest of many others who are not aware of this development in the first place and I wonder what role Apple play in Bitcoin adoption or usage not as if MacOS have an inbuilt Bitcoin wallet for its users.

The first basis they put up the whitepaper does not necessarily mean and imply they are favouring Bitcoin. Hence, when the public widely knows the whitepaper is on macOS, I don't think it can be perceived as they are losing interest, because, in the first place, there is no certainty of interest at all.

Hiding things that you claimed as generational financial innovation seems like means they are censoring the whitepaper, which is truly not the case. Apple has all the ownership to include or not to include whatever is in their system, and they are also not obliged to include anything related to Bitcoin.

And I (and the entire community) was always waiting for apple's official announcement of supporting and investing in bitcoin since past few years. But they never did lol. What a joke!

Haha, I think I got you here. I could never figure out why apple do things as well. Their logic is never understandable.

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Anyway, thanks guys I guess I got most of the answers in the thread so I'll lock this topic for now.