Benzinga | May 18, 2021 11:38AM EDT

Cardano And Polygon Skyrocket To New All-Time Highs As Investors Seek Elon Musk's Next Favorite Crypto

Proof-of-Stake (PoS) cryptocurrencies Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA) and Polygon (CRYPTO: MATIC) saw a major price growth following recent news that Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is looking for an energy-efficient alternative to Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC).

What Happened: Polygon saw its price increase by about 40% from a 24-hour low of $1.343 to a high of $1.88 before settling at $1.81, as of publication time. Cardano, on the other hand, rose by over 24.6% from a 24-hour low of $1.8944 to a high of $2.3607 and currently stands at $2.22.

Learn more: How To Buy Altcoins

Why It Matters The news follows Musk recently tweeting that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin for its electric cars due to the concerns over the impact of the network's operations on the environment. He said he is looking at other digital currencies that use less than 1% of the energy that Bitcoin does.

PoS cryptocurrencies such as the ones that just saw this growth -- which actually brought them both to new all-time highs -- pride themselves on not needing powerful and power-hungry supercomputers that "mine" them and secure their network. Instead, network security is ensured by low-power computers that lock (stake) digital assets that will be lost if the network operators misbehave -- by, for instance, approving transactions that should not be approved.

See also: How to Buy Cardano (ADA)