According to Woofun AI, Datavault (DVLT.US) suffered a sharp decline of 49.55% on Tuesday, closing at $0.067 with a trading volume of approximately 244 million shares, primarily due to the company's inability since June to withdraw its held Bitcoin from the wallet maintained by the cryptocurrency exchange Biconomy.
This liquidity crunch forced Datavault AI to restate its financial reports, fundamentally altering market expectations regarding its asset position.
The more critical variable lies in the nature of this asset transfer. Back in September 2025, Datavault entered into an agreement with Scilex Holding Company (SCLX.US), under which Scilex agreed to purchase $150 million worth of Datavault shares and warrants using Bitcoin. Scilex transferred 1,309.04 BTC to Datavault’s account at Biconomy via an off-chain transaction, not through a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain. Subsequently, Datavault sold back 491.4 BTC to Scilex for approximately $40.5 million in cash, leaving 817.64 BTC still held in the Biconomy account and currently inaccessible.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, Scilex disclosed in its June financial report that it exchanged $200 million in shares from its subsidiary Semnur for Bitcoin, then allocated $150 million of that to purchase Datavault securities, with Biconomy participating in the Bitcoin supply portion of this investment.
However, Datavault stated that when it attempted to transfer these bitcoins to an external account in June, the transfer was unsuccessful, and as of the report submission on Monday, the transfer remains incomplete.
The company further warned in the same document that this restatement may result in a delay in the filing of the third-quarter 2026 report and pose a risk to Nasdaq listing compliance; management has not yet completed its assessment of whether these matters constitute material internal control deficiencies.
From a structural perspective, Datavault currently believes that the bitcoins transferred via Scilex should be regarded as unpaid share capital owed by Scilex and should be recorded as shareholders' equity rather than listed as the company’s cryptocurrency assets.
This reclassification of accounting categories will have a significant impact: it is expected to reduce total assets by $8.1 million, $92.2 million, $57.1 million, and $49 million as of September 30, 2025, December 31, 2025, March 31, 2026, and June 30, 2026, respectively. Previously, Datavault had treated these Bitcoin balances as funds available for business operations; however, it must now reassess this position and acknowledge that these assets are effectively not freely disposable.
As of the Asian session on Wednesday, CoinDesk reached out to Biconomy regarding withdrawal requests and issues with Bitcoin backing Datavault accounts, but has not yet received a response. This follows a growing pattern of trust crises triggered by discrepancies between private agreements and on-chain ownership, after similar off-chain asset disputes emerged at multiple crypto custody providers, highlighting significant compliance and execution risks inherent in opaque asset transfer models.