Mantle and Avalanche post double-digit gains as select altcoins defy market downturn

The cryptocurrency market volatility to the downside has stretched this week, with prices broadly trending lower and trading flat on Tuesday. But to the delight of altcoin holders, XRP, Avalanche, Mantle, and Aster have been posting gains during a week of negative ETF inflows.

Week-old token Aster, a perpetual futures decentralized exchange on the Binance Chain, witnessed a 20% price uptick in the last 24 hours. The coin is one to watch because YouTuber Mr Beast bought $114,000 worth of Aster over the weekend, Cryptopolitan reported.

Ethereum layer-2 network Mantle was also among the day’s biggest earners, climbing 9% in 24 hours to trade at $1.79, and reaching a market capitalization of $5.9 billion. That performance placed it as the 37th largest crypto, according to CoinGecko.

AVAX, XRP among gainers

Avalanche followed closely with an 8.9% daily gain and a 13.7% increase over the past week, pushing its market cap to $14.5 billion. The upward price movement follows an announcement from the Bitcoin mining company on Monday about its rebranding to AVAX One. It also revealed a $550 million purchase of Avalanche tokens for its digital asset treasury holdings. 

Data from CoinGlass showed the token recorded $4.29 billion in trading volume on Monday and $4.46 billion on Friday, its highest levels since December 2023. Inflows into AVAX were also strong, with $6.67 million entering spot markets and $80.44 million flowing into futures on Monday.

Ripple’s native token XRP also had a small price increase of about 0.5%, even though it fell off from the $3.00 mark last Friday. The asset retested its 100-day moving average, dropping toward the $2.85 level where horizontal support aligns with the moving average. 

The $2.7 zone is a key battleground for buyers and sellers, and market watchers predict that a defense of this level could revive bullish sentiment to send the token back up to $3. On the other side, a break below would expose support to a demand area where buyers are likely to flock in, around the $2.0–$2.1 range.

30 million $XRP bought by whales in the past 24 hours! pic.twitter.com/DVWZyalNAC

— Ali (@ali_charts) September 22, 2025

Acting on the price slump, wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP increased their balances from 6.74 billion to 6.77 billion in the past 24 hours, a net gain of about 30 million XRP, according to data shared by analyst Ali Martinez.

Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs see sharp outflows

While select altcoins posted gains, exchange-traded funds tied to Bitcoin and Ethereum suffered significant withdrawals on Monday. Investors pulled a combined $439 million, wiping out much of the previous week’s inflows as markets adjusted to the Federal Reserve’s latest policy decision in preparation of fresh inflation data set to be released Friday.

Ethereum funds bore the brunt of the withdrawals, recording $76 million in redemptions. Fidelity’s FETH led outflows with $33.1 million, followed by Bitwise’s ETHW at $22.3 million and BlackRock’s ETHA at $15.1 million.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points, which started an initial rally in Bitcoin. The king cryptocurrency climbed from $116,000 to $118,000 following the announcement, and stepped into a monthly high on Thursday.

Momentum quickly faded after the Fed-inspired rally and caused the crypto to slip to $115,200 on Friday, hovering between that level and $116,000 through the weekend. On Monday, selling pressure intensified, driving the asset as low as $112,000.

By Tuesday, Bitcoin had dipped again, touching a two-week low of $111,600 before recovering slightly to trade near $113,000. CoinGlass data shows over $354 million in positions were liquidated in the past day alone, including $44 million linked to Bitcoin and $53 million tied to Ethereum.

Analytics firm Santiment observed that Binance traders briefly hit their highest level of short bets in more than three months before Bitcoin’s latest sell-off. Positions flipped mildly long after the decline as traders tried to capture profits from a potential rebound.

Santiment said a stronger upside move would require a period of shorts consistently outweighing longs, because the forced liquidation of bearish bets can create momentum for a recovery.

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