Access denied: Datavault AI’s $BTC saga sends DVLT down 49.55%

Datavault AI (DVLT) shares plunged nearly 50% on Tuesday after a filing revealed that the company had been unable to withdraw bitcoin from crypto exchange Biconomy since June and would have to restate its financial results. DVLT closed at $0.067, down 49.55%, with roughly 244 million shares traded.

The issue traces to a September 2025 agreement under which Scilex Holding Company agreed to purchase $150 million of Datavault shares and warrants using bitcoin. Scilex credited 1,309.04 BTC to Datavault’s Biconomy account through off-chain transfers, meaning balances changed within the exchange rather than through transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain. Datavault subsequently sold 491.4 BTC back to Scilex for about $40.5 million in cash, but its request to withdraw the bitcoin to an external account in June could not be completed and remained incomplete as of Monday’s filing.

Biconomy was also involved in supplying the bitcoin behind the investment. Scilex’s June financial report said it sold $200 million of shares in its subsidiary Semnur to Biconomy for bitcoin, then used $150 million to buy Datavault securities. Datavault said the bitcoin credited through Scilex’s investment should have been recorded as an amount owed by Scilex for the shares, an accounting treatment that would reduce shareholders’ equity rather than appearing among Datavault’s cryptocurrency assets.

The correction was expected to reduce reported assets by $92.2 million at the end of 2025 and $49 million as of June 2026. Datavault had treated the bitcoin balances as funding available to sustain operations and said the unresolved withdrawal required it to reassess that assumption.

CoinDesk said it contacted Biconomy about the withdrawal request and the bitcoin backing Datavault’s account but did not receive a response as of Asian afternoon hours Wednesday.