Mystery surrounds discovery of Bitcoin whitepaper hidden in macOS with unknown 'Virtual Scanner II' app

A hidden discovery has been made on recent versions of macOS - the Bitcoin whitepaper can be found on any Mac running macOS Catalina or newer.

The whitepaper, written by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, can be accessed through a simple Terminal command or by navigating Finder.

The command into Terminal: open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

The discovery was made by tech blogger Andy Baio, who found that the whitepaper is used as a sample document for a device called "Virtual Scanner II," which is hidden for some users or not installed by default.

Baio's discovery was not the first, as an Apple Community post from 2021 also noted the presence of Virtual Scanner II and a strange photo found within it.

While it is unclear what Virtual Scanner II is for or why it includes the Bitcoin whitepaper, the app and the whitepaper have been confirmed to appear in macOS Ventura by AppleInsider.

It remains a mystery why these files exist in macOS and whether they serve any purpose beyond their accidental discovery by curious users.