[Ampersander]

Crypto guys are in the business of grifting magic beans to rubes. They are mostly interested in the aesthetics of these technologies. Using an academic programming language gives these scientific magical vibes and such that make people believe these guys are high tech and know their shit and so on. This is the reason many crypto projects do use Haskell too, it's known as an academic research language that is difficult to use and "if it compiles it works." They come at it from the perspective of "What would sound the best when I try to sell the space money of the future?"

[pants2]

Blockchain protocols are also faced with the most active, persistent, and well-funded state sponsored attackers of any industry, so naturally formal verification should be of great interest.