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except for "append-only" and "verifiable records"

Git is "append-only". Just like a normal blockchain, you can't modify an older commit without rewriting all the commits since then.

Git also supports signed commits.

So Git could be a somewhat reasonable backend for a cryptocurrency... if only its hash function weren't broken.

Not quite since git purposefully excludes the computationally hard proof of work requirement.

In git you use other external signals to determine which fork to select in the case of diverging histories.

With blockchain, all participants are untrusted, so you just go with the longest chain by convention, and rely on the fact that it’s extremely difficult to build such a chain.

Yeah, you would need to overlay Git with a client that selects a repository’s master branch based on a PoW scheme included in the commits.

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