I don't know how the restrictions made people curious about BTC, but I do agree with you that due to unemployment and the fact that people needed another source of income could have increased adoption despite the restrictions.
And again, smart government are looking for ways to benefit from the crypto currency by form of taxation, and a government that is bereft of ideas will clamp down on what they could even benefit from.
Imagine how much binance paid as fined; about $4billion was transferred to the us Treasury. This money is even bigger than some country's national budget.
For example, if an area is closed off with a fence and there is a board that says "No Entry". So, in cases like people who don't know the reasons behind the ban, they will start thinking about the reasons behind the ban. And these thoughts will grow and eventually a high level of curiosity will arise. Well, the same thing happens if there is a bitcoin ban in a country. People who already know about Bitcoin will probably no longer be curious, but for people who initially don't know about Bitcoin, they will start to be curious and start to find out about the reasons behind the ban on Bitcoin and yes, they will find out about Bitcoin itself. So it is possible that people who are originally curious will actually become interested in bitcoin after learning about it and bitcoin adoption will continue to increase. Maybe that's the blessing in disguise. And if a country bans bitcoin they are actually hurting themselves. Because they will not benefit from crypto taxes, which in fact transaction activity is much higher even though they prohibit it. Luckily I am in a crypto-friendly country. Even though the crypto tax here is high, it doesn't matter because we can be calmer when investing in crypto.
I get your point though, but it is not always that way. For me, when I see I sign of NO ENTRY placed on a property, I am sure I won't even bother finding out why it was placed there, because it's not any of my business. But I will only try to investigate this signage if I have been using this facility before this signage shows up.
The same is true with Bitcoin ban, people with little or no knowledge about it in that country will probably have a legit reason to stay or get discouraged from knowing more about it.
