A cryptocurrency whale has breathed a sigh of relief after recovering almost all of the $71 million stolen in a recent "address poisoning" attack. The victim had sent wrapped Bitcoin tokens (WBTC) to an attacker who mimicked their address, but thanks to successful negotiations, the majority of the funds have been recovered.

The attack, also known as "dusting," involves spamming a high net worth individual's wallet with transactions from a similar-looking address, hoping they will accidentally send funds to the attacker. In this case, the attacker swapped the stolen WBTC tokens to ether, which decreased in value slightly more than Bitcoin over the past week, resulting in a recovered amount of $66.8 million.

Blockchain cybersecurity firm Match Systems and exchange Cryptex played a role in the negotiations with the attacker, leading to the full recovery.

According to a press release, the victim has no further complaints against the attacker. While details of the negotiations are scarce, it appears the attacker initially rejected a 10% bounty offer but later returned the full remaining funds.

This successful recovery comes as a relief in the crypto community, where multi-million dollar exploits are all too common. However, there are signs that illicit activity may be decreasing, with April seeing the lowest amount of funds lost to scams since March 2021, according to security firm CertiK.

Additionally, the recent conviction of Avraham Eisenberg for fraud related to the Mango Markets exploit may deter attackers from accepting bounties in the future.