Available evidence up to November 29, 2025 shows that governments, including the U.S. and China, have not been able to stop Bitcoin as a global system, even though they have significantly regulated or restricted its use.

Key points:

1. Bitcoin network is operating at record strength. In April 2025, Bitcoin’s hash rate (a measure of the total computing power securing the network) hit an all‑time high of ~838–974 exahashes per second, indicating a very robust, globally distributed mining ecosystem rather than a system that has been shut down or crippled. (coindesk.com)

2. China’s ban has not extinguished Bitcoin activity. China imposed a comprehensive ban on crypto trading and mining in 2021. Yet reporting in 2025 shows that Bitcoin mining in China has rebounded, with underground or semi-tolerated operations giving China an estimated ~14% share of global Bitcoin mining and as much as 15–20% of global capacity, despite the official ban. (reuters.com) The People’s Bank of China continues to reiterate that crypto activities are illegal, but this has not eliminated Bitcoin’s presence; it has mainly pushed it into more opaque channels. (reuters.com)

3. Several countries ban Bitcoin, but only locally, not globally. A number of states (e.g., Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea) still maintain full prohibitions on Bitcoin use or trading. (cryptoupturn.com) However, these are national restrictions; they have not stopped Bitcoin from functioning globally, nor prevented people in those countries from accessing it via technical workarounds.

4. Major economies have moved toward regulation and even accumulation, not eradication. In the United States, Bitcoin is legal and treated as property for tax purposes, with exchanges required to comply with AML and KYC rules. (bitrue.com) In 2025, the U.S. went further by creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve via executive order, explicitly recognizing Bitcoin as a kind of “digital gold” and instructing that seized government BTC be held as reserve assets rather than sold. (whitehouse.gov) The U.S. also enacted the GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoins, indicating a strategy of integration and oversight rather than prohibition of core crypto infrastructure. (en.wikipedia.org)

5. Policy reversals haven’t stopped Bitcoin’s existence. El Salvador, which made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021, rescinded its legal-tender status in 2025 after mixed results and external pressure. (en.wikipedia.org) This is a significant policy change but does not affect whether the Bitcoin network itself continues to operate globally—which it does.

Overall, more than four years after the 2021 prediction, Bitcoin remains globally accessible, its network security is at record levels, and even the most restrictive governments have not managed to eliminate it—only to constrain local usage. That aligns with Chamath’s claim that “there was nothing that they could do to stop it before” and “there’s nothing that they can do to stop it now,” interpreted as an assertion that states cannot fully shut down Bitcoin as a functioning global system.