We see how fast cryptocurrencies are growing.

Going from a market cap of $20 billion at the beginning of the year to $148 billion today, cryptocurrencies have been on a tear.

One of the more remarkable aspects?

It’s expanded in spite of the difficulties that come with buying and selling cryptocurrencies.

Sometimes it’s not easy or quick to buy a few dollars’ worth of your favorite cryptocurrency. Setting up a wallet, putting fiat money into it, waiting days for the conversion to go through…

When you think about it, it’s pretty amazing that cryptocurrencies have taken flight.

I can only imagine how much faster they would have grown without some of the hassle.

This is something that’s going to have to be addressed.

Otherwise, blockchain applications will never gain mass use… not if customers have to wait days to buy the application’s native coins.

If it’s not addressed, we will never see a billion blockchains emerge. A new technological age will never be realized. The vast benefits of speed and privacy applied to hundreds of use cases for consumers and businesses will be lost forever.

I don’t think anybody wants that to happen. (Well, maybe the governments that depend on fiat money wouldn’t mind!)

Startup Technology to the Rescue

Fortunately, startups are already coming up with technological fixes.

Thanks to young companies like Dharma, I don’t think this will be a problem for much longer.

Dharma recently graduated from one of the U.S.’s top accelerator programs, Y Combinator. Its product is still being tested by a few selected customers.

Its idea is simple. While users are waiting for their conversion to finish up so they can try out a new blockchain-based app, Dharma gives them a small loan in the token currency to get them started right away.

Source: Dharma

Getting the loan, Dharma says, takes less than five minutes. And it takes only a few lines of code for app developers to incorporate Dharma’s technology.