Well, to be honest, BTC was never meant to be used as war money, and I don't think it has been used as one, because that's simple money laundering, and BTC is not suitable for ML. You might not agree with me, but statistics show that BTC is the hardest way to land money.
I'm sure no one has ever said that Bitcoin is meant to be a money laundering medium, we all recognize it as the most reliable mode of payment, convenient, transparent, and self-custodial. Misuse of anything can be possible when you put into the hands of everyone.
ML = machine learning haha (Kiding).
Opps hardest way to land money ? or Lunder Money.
I will say that China banned crypto for many reasons; some say they manipulated it, but there were energy and other crises, so they had to ban it, and now they have accepted the crypto, using their second nation (Hong Kong) to accept the BTC and use all of its features. BTC has something in it that governments have relearned and made rules around.
Rules? I'm sure you're referring to the Policies, well China has a great History with the crypto market, especially with Bitcoin, they updated themselves with the developments in the crypto market to overcome some sort of local capital loss but I'm they must realize that whatever they've done was temp solution.
Hong Kong is not a second nation SAR (Special Administrative Region), with different political and administrative powers so you can say they are testing out things hehe.