Andy Baio – the former CTO of Kickstarter – has discovered something unusual about Apple’s Mac computers. They all seem to come with copies of the bitcoin whitepaper.

The Whitepaper for Bitcoin is a Regular Mac Resident

The whitepaper for bitcoin was first introduced on Halloween of 2008. During that time, major countries like the U.S. and much of Europe were entering the early stages of the Great Recession that would last through the next few years, and bitcoin was introduced as a tool that could potentially aid those who were in need.

Banks were closing left and right (boy, doesn’t that feel familiar right about now), and bitcoin would be a universal money and investment protocol that could aid those who were deeply affected by what was going on. The situation led to several bankruptcies, foreclosures, and a stock market that would crash and not even begin to witness any form of recovery until 2014 (six years later). It was a sad and ugly moment in the history of the world.

The idea that the whitepaper is now hidden within the realms of virtually every Apple Mac out there (at least that’s what it’s looking like at press time) feels like Satoshi Nakamoto – the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin – is trying to tell users something. Maybe that bitcoin is there to help them get out of whatever financial jam they’re experiencing if they’re willing to try it and trust it.

Baio – in an interview – stated:

I’ve asked over a dozen Mac-using friends to confirm, and it was there for every one of them.

The idea that it’s there to be viewed in every Mac device suggests the creators of Mac or the executives behind the company made a conscious decision to include it there, but Baio doesn’t think it’s that simple. Continuing his statement on the matter, he explained:

In its early history, Apple developers used to hide Easter eggs in the operating system, but I get the impression this wasn’t something that management would have approved of. Basically, the decision of a single engineer.

In the long run, it appears Apple may have known about the inclusion of the whitepaper and tasked the engineer who had put it in each device to remove it. This could easily explain why the duty was never completed and the whitepaper has remained… Because the engineer wants it there. Baio said:

With this new attention to it, I’ll be surprised if it isn’t removed in the next beta.

This was Done on Purpose

He further commented on his blog:

A little bird tells me that someone internally filed it [the bitcoin whitepaper] as an issue nearly a year ago, assigned to the same engineer who put the PDF there in the first place, and that person hasn’t taken action or commented on the issue since.

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