Git as if it'd be a cryptocurrency
Does Git implement a blockchain?
Spoiler: NO!
Both use Merkle trees
Bitcoin is like Git
In Git (a distributed version control system) all your changes are organized in a chain protected by cryptographic hashes. If you trust the latest hash, you can get all the previous information (or any part of it) from any source and still verify that it is what you expect. Similarly, in Bitcoin, all transactions are organized in a chain (the blockchain) and once validated, no matter where they are stored, you can always trust any piece of blockchain by checking a chain of hashes that link to a hash you already trust. This naturally enables distributed storage and easy integrity checks.
Bitcoin is unlike Git
In a way that everyone strives to work on a single branch. In Git everyone may have several branches and fork and merge them all day long. In Bitcoin one cannot “merge” forks. Blockchain is a actually a tree of transaction histories, but there is always one biggest branch (which has the value) and some accidental mini-branches (no more than one-two blocks long) that have no value at all. In Git content matters (regardless of the branch), in Bitcoin consensus matters (regardless of the content).