Summary of what happened

• In 2020, ByteDance was already valued at $100B+ in private markets, making it the world’s most valuable startup. 【5turn5search7】
• In April 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), explicitly targeting ByteDance/TikTok and requiring divestment of TikTok’s U.S. operations by January 19, 2025, or the app would be banned from U.S. app stores and hosting. 【3view0】
• The Supreme Court upheld PAFACA; TikTok shut down its U.S. site on January 18, 2025, and Apple/Google removed TikTok from U.S. app stores on January 19, 2025, i.e., a short-lived legal ban did in fact take effect. 【3view0】【0search3】【0search4】
• On January 20, 2025, the new administration issued an executive order delaying enforcement for 75 days to “save TikTok” while pursuing a divestiture-based solution; later orders by President Trump extended the enforcement deadline multiple times. 【0search1】【2view0】
• On September 25, 2025, Trump’s executive order “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” formally endorsed a “qualified divestiture” in which TikTok U.S. would be operated by a new U.S.-based joint venture majority‑owned and controlled by U.S. persons, with ByteDance and affiliates owning less than 20% and no ongoing operational control over the algorithm or data. 【2view0】
• A Reuters piece on November 25, 2025, reports ByteDance is selling about 80% of TikTok’s U.S. assets to a consortium of U.S. and global investors; ByteDance is expected to hold under 20% of TikTok U.S. specifically to comply with the 2024 law. 【1view0】
• Meanwhile, ByteDance’s overall valuation has risen sharply since 2020. Private transactions valued it at > $100B in 2020, 【5turn5search7】 around $300–330B in 2024–2025 buybacks, 【4search1】【5turn5search1】 and some recent auctions have implied valuations approaching $480B. 【4search3】【4search8】 That is the opposite of a “massive destruction” of enterprise value relative to mid‑2020.

How this compares to Chamath’s prediction

Chamath’s core claim (July 2020):

Unless ByteDance sells down to roughly 20–30% ownership and puts the rest “in the hands of Americans,” TikTok will be banned in the U.S., causing massive destruction of enterprise value.

Key elements and what we see in reality:

1. Ownership threshold (~20–30%) and forced divestiture

   • PAFACA effectively codified that a foreign‑adversary app like TikTok must be divested such that it is no longer controlled by a “foreign adversary,” with 20% ownership used in the statutory test. 【3view0】
   • The U.S. government and ByteDance have now agreed to a framework where ByteDance and Chinese investors fall below 20% of the U.S. TikTok entity, with the rest owned and controlled by U.S. and allied investors. 【2view0】【1view0】
   • This is strikingly close to his “sell under 20 or 30% to Americans” condition.

2. Ban if they don’t sell

   • The law explicitly created a sell‑or‑ban structure: if ByteDance didn’t complete a qualified divestiture by the deadline, U.S. app stores and hosting providers were legally barred from distributing or updating TikTok, i.e., a de facto nationwide ban. 【3view0】
   • When no divestiture had yet occurred by January 19, 2025, TikTok was briefly banned: it shut down its U.S. service and was removed from major app stores before presidential orders paused enforcement and began a negotiated divestiture path. 【3view0】【0search3】【0search1】
   • So in the short run, the “if no sale, then ban” mechanism did materialize in law and even in practice, albeit for a very short period before being reversed.

3. “Massive destruction in enterprise value”

   • Despite intense political and legal risk, ByteDance’s valuation in 2025 is far above its 2020 level (hundreds of billions of dollars vs. a bit over $100B in 2020), and TikTok itself is still generally viewed as an extremely valuable asset. 【5turn5search7】【4search1】【4search3】【4search8】
   • Because ByteDance ultimately moved toward exactly the divestiture he described as the way to avoid a ban, the world never fully realized the long‑duration “banned in the U.S. and value collapses” scenario. The only ban was brief and didn’t produce the predicted long‑term value destruction.

Why this is best scored as ambiguous

• His structural read of U.S. policy was largely accurate: the U.S. did settle on a policy that effectively said “sell down to <~20% and U.S. control, or get banned,” matching both his ownership threshold and his contention that majority Chinese ownership was unsustainable. 【3view0】【2view0】【1view0】
• The counterfactual he specified (“if they don’t sell, TikTok will be banned and its value destroyed”) has not been fully tested. When ByteDance hadn’t yet sold, we briefly saw a ban, but that was quickly reversed once a political deal and divestiture path emerged. We never saw a prolonged, no‑sale scenario in which to measure the “massive destruction in enterprise value.”
• Because ByteDance did move toward the sale he described, TikTok remains available in the U.S. and highly valuable; thus the negative outcome he warned about was largely avoided by the very condition he attached to it.

Given that:

• he was directionally right about the regulatory endgame (forced major U.S. ownership with ByteDance below ~20%),
• there was a real, if short‑lived, U.S. ban when that condition was not (yet) met,
• but the long‑run “massive destruction in enterprise value” never occurred because ByteDance chose the divestiture path,

…it’s not cleanly “right” or “wrong.” The crucial “if no sale, then lasting ban and value collapse” branch never fully played out, even though policy mechanisms supporting it were built. Hence, the fairest classification is ambiguous: his core mechanism was validated, but the ultimate outcome he described cannot be definitively judged from observed reality.