Show HN: Bit – A fast and easy Python Bitcoin library | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Bit – A fast and easy Python Bitcoin library

github.com

72 pointsofek16 comments

Am I the only one annoyed by the name? "Bit" isn't very useful or specific, yet it takes up a pretty big parking space.

A parking space in ofek's city though. Feel free to call your project bit too.

If you release software to the public, you run the risk of other people wanting you to use it.

That's not really how Python packages work. Public packages need unique names, mostly because of PyPI, where package names are all on the same namespace. This can cause some interesting problems:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0541/

Even locally, all packages are supposed to have unique names (though virtualenvs can make things nicer).

Agreed. Why not call it "python-bitcoin"?

    pip install python-bitcoin

and

    import bitcoin

would be great. Otherwise the name "Bit" makes me think it's some kind of bit manipulation tools library.

Thanks for testing on pypy and for supporting Python 3! Sometimes it's just a small set of changes to support python 3 and testing on pypy is awesome, so thanks!

bit.PrivateKey.get_transactions -- would there be any way to filter these on transactions since a given block height?

Not yet, but limiting by # of confirmations is planned!

Nice to see the project that inspired your recent https://github.com/pyca/cryptography performance work, ofek!

Thanks! FYI, with pyca/cryptography 1.8 using your https://github.com/wbond/asn1crypto, Bit's ECDSA signing is >100 usec faster :)

Vulnerable if https://bitpay.com/api/rates gets hacked.

You don't have to rely on that https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/advanced.html#server-integr...

I think that relying on it should be the default rather than an advanced option. Kind of like "locked down by default" that you'd want from a database that isn't mongodb.

So what is real life case for this ?

> When I originally went to experiment with sending Bitcoin there were really no good choices.

https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/intro.html#why-bit

Version 0.2.0 is out now! https://ofek.github.io/bit/community/updates.html#release-hi...

bitc would be a better name

using a generic word as name would make it harder for search engine to rank your site

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