Recently I hired some virtual assistants on Upwork to help me grow my website, however, for some reason they tried to destroy my search engine rankings.
Do we know if the country of India has something against bitcoin or anything recent in the news that would suggest this?
What happened to you is extremely sad; But it seems to me that the virtual assistants you have hired are inexperienced, they may not have done it on purpose, it happened out of ignorance. Upwork is a fairly regulated site, where job ratings are given to those who work; So if you do any wrong, you can give a negative rating in their name. However, it is not right to blame the whole country or region for the bad deeds of any person.
I also think the same,this is what happen if you are not getting deep in hiring someone to work with OP because this is a serious Job and need a experience partner.
They did not try to destroy your site OP instead they don't know that this will affect your site.
and this is by Innocence so next time make sure that whom you hires has really experience and willing to help you.