If it's illegal then no legitimate financial institution or business will touch it, which will make it an underground niche for criminals only, and will allow police to arrest people just on that basis (a bit like bringing criminals down on tax evasion when proving their other crimes is tricky)
Then in places like China if they decide to really kill it then they absolutely can do it very quickly (don't confuse official bans and actual will to ban in a country like China, the former is lip service, the latter is brutal).
Sounds very stoppable to me if governments decide to.