I'd like to make my own crypto currency. I don't want to just recompile the Bitcoin source code and the rename it. I'd like to do it from scratch just to learn more about it. I'm thinking of using Python as the language for the implementation but I heard that in terms of performance Python isn't the best. My question is, would a network written in Python be able to perform well under the possibility of millions of peers (I know it's not going to happen but I'd like to make my network scalable.)
Nothing beats good ol' C for performance. However, if you plan on parallelising everything for multi-CPU support I would give Haskell a try. It is inherently parallel, so you won't have to put in extra effort for optimizations.
You can also do something similar in C with OpenMP and Cilk using pragmas.
Good Luck!
Python Peer to Peer Network