Bitcoin treasury Datavault AI plunges 50% after firm says it can’t access its BTC
The company said the accounting correction will cut reported assets by $92.2 million at the end of 2025 after bitcoin held on Biconomy could not be withdrawn.
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.
The stock closed at $0.067, down 49.55%, with roughly 244 million shares traded.
The problem traces back to a September 2025 agreement with Scilex Holding Company, which agreed to purchase $150 million of Datavault shares and warrants using bitcoin.
Scilex credited 1,309.04 BTC to Datavault’s account at Biconomy through off-chain transfers, meaning the 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 the transfer could not be completed when it requested a withdrawal to an external account in June, the comapny said, and remained incomplete as of Monday’s filing.
Biconomy was also involved in supplying the bitcoin behind the investment. Scilex’s June financial report says it sold $200 million of shares in its subsidiary Semnur to Biconomy for bitcoin, then used $150 million to buy Datavault securities.
Datavault now says the bitcoin credited through Scilex’s investment should have been recorded as an amount Scilex owed for the shares. That amount would reduce shareholders’ equity instead of appearing among Datavault’s cryptocurrency assets.
The correction is expected to reduce reported assets by $92.2 million at the end of 2025 and $49 million as of June 2026. Datavault had counted those bitcoin balances as money it could draw on to keep the business running, but must now revisit the assessment.
CoinDesk contacted Biconomy about the withdrawal request and the bitcoin backing Datavault’s account and did not receive a response as of Asian afternoon hours Wednesday.
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Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Datavault AI's inability to access its Bitcoin treasury represents a critical failure in custody infrastructure—a problem that cascades beyond the single firm. The $92.2M asset write-down signals either a breakdown in the underlying custody solution (Biconomy), a smart contract vulnerability, or a misunderstanding of withdrawal mechanics that should have been stress-tested pre-deployment. This echoes historical custody failures (Celsius, Voyager) but with a twist: the firm *knew* it couldn't access funds before year-end, suggesting governance or operational breakdown rather than market shock.
For the sector, this undermines confidence in third-party Bitcoin treasury solutions just as institutions increasingly adopt on-chain custody models. The 50% stock plunge reflects not just asset loss but reputational damage—treasuries are supposed to be the *simplest* use case for blockchain infrastructure. The Biconomy integration failure will likely trigger audits of similar setups across crypto firms holding material reserves, potentially exposing hidden custody risks at other treasuries relying on non-standard bridge or sidechain solutions.
The incident highlights why self-custody or battle-tested, regulated custodians (Coinbase, Kraken) remain the institutional default despite DeFi's promises. A treasury that cannot execute its core function—securing and accessing assets—is a governance liability regardless of how sophisticated the underlying protocol.