[devishard]

I'm somewhat surprised: this is written in Python.

I wonder what the motivation is here. I've long believed that a lot of security issues could be avoided simply by using higher-level languages, but I haven't seen many major security undertaking done in higher-level languages.

[querulous]

something like bitcoin is an excellent match for a high level language (altho not necessarily python). the performance demands are all in the hashing algorithms (which are done by dedicated hardware, not software). it's way more important the control layer be correct than it be fast

[devishard]

I totally agree, in fact, I'd say "it's way more important to be correct than to be fast" is almost always true in cryptography. Incorrect crypto is useless no matter how fast it is.