Bitcoin has been banned in all sorts of countries, China being the most influential one to have taken such a stance on Bitcoin, while some other "less relevant" states such as El Salvador have fully embraced it. The ban didn't stop the Chinese from owning Bitcoin though... All the government did was push large mining pools out of the country and forbid trading.
You can't actually block blockchain technology from doing what it was designed to do... However... I don't know exactly how the Chinese are able to buy Bitcoin lately, but from what I saw on Twitter it seems that they still own some coins of a total amount of 21 million that will ever exist.
Some even say that mining hasn't actually been halted in China entirely. It's just that the party managed to push away the renowned mining companies and scared the shit out of serious miners but I doubt they can do anything about some dude mining Bitcoin in a small village or something like that. How would they even find him unless he's consuming insane amounts of energy?
Recently there have been talks "at the governmental level" of banning Tik Tok in the US. The premise from which such discussions started was that the video streaming app might be used by the Chinese to spy on the US. This might be possible, no doubt about that, but having a puppet like Joe Biden as president, who's presumably set in charge by the CCP itself you don't need much spying on the US.
The US is also very vocal and open about anything...
According to several media reports, the Biden administration has demanded that ByteDance sell TikTok to a U.S. owner or have TikTok face a complete ban on its U.S. operations.
On Feb. 24, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) introduced the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries (DATA) Act, which would provide the president with more authorities to block transactions associated with the import or export of Americans’ “sensitive data” where there are national security risks.
The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act would authorize the secretary of commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the U.S. and foreign adversaries, focused on information and communications technologies (ICTs) that pose risks to U.S. national security—put simply, investigating tech products and services that could pose national security risks.
The bill did not name TikTok specifically, but it was clearly one of the companies in mind when the bill was written.
source
So, the powers in charge in America will once again use the "security risks excuse" to gain even more control over their citizens, in this case moving to police the internet. The bill that is mentioned here is rather vague when it comes to its direct target(TikTok) and can be used in "banning" or trying to control the use of other technologies that imply any sort of internal and external transactions such as the Bitcoin blockchain, or the mining hash rate that the US currently hosts.
When China banned miners the US showed a more positive attitude toward such an industry and quite a few of the renowned mining pools moved out of China and into America. Now it seems that the US is somehow changing its stance. Is America about to kick Bitcoin "out of its borders"? @taskmaster4450 might have the answer...
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian