According to Woofun AI, the stock price of Datavault AI Inc. (DVLT.US) experienced a cliff-style drop on Tuesday. The core trigger was the company's disclosure that it was unable to withdraw bitcoins linked to the $150 million transaction from third-party wallets. This liquidity crisis directly caused market confidence to collapse. Investors voted with their feet, causing sharp stock price shocks.
DVLT shares were trading at $0.067 at the close on Tuesday, down 49.6% from the previous day's $0.133. Market panic spread, and today's trading volume surged to nearly 250 million shares, eight times the volume of the previous trading day. The root of the problem dates back to September 2025, when Datavault AI and Scilex Holding Co. (SCLX.US) signed a securities purchase agreement, and Scilex agreed to purchase 15 million common shares and 263,914,094 pre-financing warrants (pre-financing warrants) for US$150 million. The amount was paid in BTC, converted to $112,915.52 each, with a nominal consideration of 1,328.43 BTC; due to the deduction of 19.39 cash advances, 1,309.04 were actually recorded, and deposited by Biconomy Pte via off-chain transfers twice on September 26 and November 25, 2025. A digital wallet maintained by Ltd.
Although Datavault AI sold back some BTC to Scilex for around $40.5 million in cash between September 2025 and January 2026, the remaining 817.609 BTC was blocked when attempting to transfer to an external account in June 2026 (currently worth around $66.14 million in BTC prices at the time), and the withdrawal was not completed as of October 26, with no official explanation.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, Datavault AI admitted in Form 8-K submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26 that financial statements for the third quarter of 2025, the full year of 2025, the first quarter of 2026, and the second quarter of 2026 were unreliable due to accounting errors in this significant equity transaction.
Looking at the financial structure, Datavault AI believes that the BTC associated with the Scilex transaction did not meet the criteria for being recognized as a company's digital asset. These amounts should have been recorded as subscription receivables from the equity issuance and included as deductions from shareholders' equity. Previously, the company viewed the BTC balance as a source of liquidity, but now there is uncertainty about recovering funds from Scilex, forcing management to re-evaluate the company's ability to continue operating. The company plans to restate the affected financial statements, but the timing of submission is yet to be determined. The restatement is expected to reduce the company's total assets by $8.1 million, $92.2 million, $57.1 million, and $49 million on September 30, 2025, December 31, 2026, and June 30, 2026, respectively.
This incident revealed the dual compliance and liquidity risks faced by Web3 companies in traditional capital markets. When crypto assets cannot be realized in a timely manner and there are major flaws in accounting processing, the ability of enterprises to continue operating will be severely challenged. This is a profound warning from the market to Web3 corporate governance structures following multiple crypto-related corporate finance scandals.