Datavault AI Inc. (DVLT) shares plunged nearly 50% on Tuesday after the company said it cannot withdraw bitcoin tied to a $150 million deal. The stock closed near $0.067, down 49.6% from $0.133 the day before. Nearly 250 million shares changed hands, eight times the prior day’s volume.
The disclosure came in a Form 8-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26. Datavault said more than a year of financial statements cannot be relied upon. The error traces to a large equity transaction involving bitcoin.
In September 2025, Datavault signed a securities purchase agreement with Scilex Holding. Scilex agreed to buy 15 million Datavault shares plus a pre-funded warrant covering more than 263.9 million shares, for $150 million payable in bitcoin. At the contract price of $112,915.52 per bitcoin, the deal implied about 1,328.43 bitcoin.
Scilex credited 1,309.04 bitcoin to a company wallet at Biconomy through off-chain transfers. That means the balances moved inside the exchange’s system, not on the Bitcoin blockchain. Between September 2025 and January 2026, Datavault sold 491.4 bitcoin back to Scilex for about $40.5 million in cash. 
In June 2026, Datavault asked to withdraw bitcoin from the Biconomy wallet to an external account. As of October 26, the withdrawal had still not completed. The filing gave no explanation for why it failed.
Datavault now says the bitcoin never qualified as a company asset. It should have been recorded as a subscription receivable from the share issuance, reducing stockholders’ equity instead. The restatements are expected to reduce reported total assets by $8.1 million as of September 30, 2025, $92.2 million as of December 31, 2025, $57.1 million as of March 31, 2026, and $49 million as of June 30, 2026.
Management is reassessing its going-concern evaluation. It had counted the bitcoin balances as a source of liquidity, and collection from Scilex remains uncertain. The company said it intends to restate the affected statements but has not set a timetable. The Block reported it has asked Datavault and Scilex for comment.
The episode is a custody story before it is a market story. Datavault booked bitcoin as an asset while holding no keys to it. An off-chain credit on an exchange is an IOU, not possession. When the company needed the coins, the coins were not its to move. Third-party custody has burned others before. The case for holding bitcoin directly speaks for itself.
