Marc Andreessen, Satoshi Nakamoto Take Top Honors at Inaugural Blockchain Awards

Day one of the Bitcoin2014 conference in Amsterdam wrapped up with the inaugural Blockchain Awards. Hosts Nicolas Cary from Blockchain.info and Peter Vessenes from the Bitcoin Foundation announced the winners in 10 categories.

Matthew Kenahan from The Bitcoin Society picked up two awards: one for the Most Impactful Charity and another one for the Bitcoin Champion. Andreas Antonopoulos originally won the latter, but passed on the award to Kenahan.

The Bitcoin Society is dedicated to sharing and spreading information, education and awareness of bitcoin via guerrilla marketing, television media, billboards and the bitcoin community. It plans to add more content to its website that will be useful to newcomers in the bitcoin space over the next few weeks, and a global campaign in the months following to make sure everyone in the world has some familiarity with bitcoin.

Kenahan said he would donate all of his award money to the Women's Annex Foundation.

Gavin Andresen was the crowd-pleaser of the evening, as he disguised himself to accept the award for best Visionary Academic Paper on Satoshi Nakamoto's behalf, garnering laughs from the audience. Check out his get up!

The award-winners are:

The Blockchain Awards are a joint brainchild of Blockchain.info and the Bitcoin Foundation. In an online voting process, people from around the world nominated folks in all 10 categories. Voting stayed open about three weeks.

“We wanted to celebrate accomplishments and visions of both companies and individuals,” Vessenes said in the opening address.

Tonight’s Blockchain Awards were also sponsored in part by Gridseed.