Demelza Hays

Fund Manager of Incrementum

(Forbes 30 Under 30)

www.demelzahays.com

3 October 2019 20 Min Read

Demelza Hays' Vision for a Decentralized Financial Future

It is a pleasure to introduce you to Demelza Hays, an incredibly devoted woman, and the fund manager at Incrementum AG, a Lichtenstein-based wealth management firm. Demelza’s dedication and hard work have paid off over the years, having recently put her on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Europe 2019: Finance list.

Demelza received her Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of South Florida, and her Master’s in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics. She started her first crypto business in 2014 and continued by co-founding Blockchain Büro, a company focused on opening Bitcoin ATMs in Lichtenstein.

I warmly welcome everybody to hear Demelza’s story. She is a remarkable woman who has had her ups and downs and still managed to persevere and achieve great success. Needless to say, her journey is a true inspiration for anyone who currently experiences the ‘lows’ of life.

The Logician

Hi Demelza, thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me! Do you mind telling us more about yourself? Who is Demelza Hays? How and why did you choose your current career?

Demelza Hays

Thank you, for reaching out!

I have been a busy bee for the past 8 years or so. I think my career chose me.
I never had ambitions to become a fund manager or work in finance. I just craved knowledge.

I wanted to read every book I could get my hands on, and whenever I met smart people that I could learn from, I clung them in order to absorb all of their knowledge.

I was basically pursuing truth regarding health and economics, and that led me to Liechtenstein — a country with no public debt and no unemployment.

They have good laws that support property rights and efficient courts that enforce the laws.

I am originally from Florida, and I made my first couple hundred thousand dollars buying houses in Tampa for 30,000 apiece in 2009 after the real estate crash.

Some of the properties were going for 1,000 dollars because the banks had thousands of foreclosed homes on their balances sheet and the City of Tampa was fining the banks for not mowing the lawns, so the banks just wanted to get rid of them.

Later, I worked for the US Department of State in Punjab for two years, then I moved to France where I did my Master’s in Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, and then I started my Ph.D. in Business Economics at the University of Liechtenstein.

My doctoral supervisor, Professor Dr. Andrei Kirilenko is currently at Cambridge University, and he is the former Chief Economist of one of the regulatory agencies in the US called the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

I have been publishing papers and researching cryptocurrencies since 2013. I have also been invited to speak at the Federal Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio and for the Bundestag in Germany, and for the European Commission in Brussels, amongst other honors.

I started my first crypto business in 2014, where I was buying and selling cryptocurrencies in France.

Unfortunately, my partner in the business had a knife pulled on him, and we had 40 of our Bitcoin stolen in Rotterdam in the Netherlands when we were doing a cash trade with someone we met from Localbitcoins.com when they still had the local cash feature on their website, which they recently got rid of because of Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money Laundering compliance.

It was a tough loss of 40 Bitcoin as that was all of my savings. I still haven’t fully recovered my Bitcoin stash, unfortunately. I learned my lesson regarding cash trades in the hard way.

After that, I decided to go ahead and make a Bitcoin ATM business in 2015, because that’s the same as me buying and selling crypto to people in person, except I don’t need to be in person — there is a machine instead. A whole lot safer!

Out of the blue, I just sent an email to the financial regulators in Liechtenstein, and I asked them if I could meet with them to discuss my business idea.

I met with them in February of 2015, and my partner and I were the first people to present Bitcoin and crypto to them in person. They accepted our proposal for a Bitcoin ATM, and we got to work on founding a business.

We named the business “Blockchain Büro” because Büro means an office in German. It’s still in operation today, but we do not have any Bitcoin ATMs anymore. We do mostly government consulting and advising banks.

We built a distributed ledger points system for green carpooling for the Amt für Umwelt in Liechtenstein, which translates to Bureau for Environment two years ago to name an example.

My partner in business, Philipp Büchel runs the Büro and he is from Liechtenstein, and he helps people who are interested in doing crypto business in Liechtenstein get started with the right contacts.

We also helped advise them on the Blockchain Law that Liechtenstein is making official in November of this year. We have been working on that for almost three years now with the Ministry of Finance in Liechtenstein.

On the other hand, the University of Liechtenstein asked me to develop a class on the topic of cryptocurrencies in 2016, and I began teaching it in 2017, and I have been teaching it every year since. I also teach other courses at the University like corporate finance and principles of finance.

In 2017, I joined Incrementum AG as a fund manager, which is a licensed wealth management firm that has 6 funds and $100 million in assets under management.

I’m actually in the process of becoming a shareholder this quarter. We are launching a regulated cryptocurrency fund for professional investors this August 16th. The fund invests in physical gold and cryptocurrencies because we do not think the current monetary system is sustainable.

People will increasingly turn to hard assets over the next couple of decades. When they do, they will choose between Gold and Digital Gold. If the price of gold becomes too high, then people will buy gold substitutes like Bitcoin.

On the other hand, if Bitcoin’s price becomes too high, then people will buy Bitcoin substitutes like gold. Our fund arbitrages between these two asset classes.

I hope to finish my Ph.D. this winter and start a family soon enough. Even though I’m good at making money, my passion is cooking.

The Logician

Congratulations on being among Forbes 30 under 30! The honor must be outstanding! Have you ever dreamed of being where you are today? What do you believe most contributed to such success?

Demelza Hays

I never dreamed of being a Forbes 30 Under 30. In 2014, I attended a startup competition at Stanford University in California called Bases.

At the time, I had an import-export business from India that sold Sikh turbans to the global Sikh diaspora. I was earning about 3,000 a month from a website that I built myself and with basically no capital.

At the Bases competition, I met a young man who was pitching his company to venture capitalists, and I saw on Facebook that he was awarded the Forbes 30 Under 30 Award in 2015.

At the time, I thought to myself how cool that must be to receive that award. I never imagined one day I would get it too.

My whole life hasn’t been one big success story. I grew up in poverty in the U.S. My dad was a taxi driver and my mom was a nurse.

The roof on our house in Tampa had so many leaks and we couldn’t afford a new roof so we had a collection of pots placed around the house that would catch the rain when there would be thunderstorms. One of my first chores growing up was emptying the pots and pans.

We couldn’t afford health insurance or cable television, so I never had either of those things.

My Dad bought me a PlayStation for one birthday but then our house got robbed a month later, and my Dad couldn’t afford a new one, so I didn’t grow up with video games either. My mother passed away when I was 12 and really altered my whole development.

I don’t really have success with interpersonal relationships. I’m very introverted and not interested in small talk. I can’t really sit and eat cake and drink tea and talk about the weather. It makes me go crazy. I’m addicted to talking about ideas.

How to optimize my life, how to make the world a better place — that kind of stuff. My mind never stops running. It gets very stressful at times. I have to force myself to slow down and shut off my mind.

I avoid coffee and caffeine and anything that makes my mind go even faster. I can shut off my mind when I am forced to focus on something simple like cooking or chasing a ball. I love sports where you have to chase a ball like a tennis. I play a few times per week. I also like dancing.

I think a few different factors contributed to my success. One thing, for example, is that when you start out poor you really do not have much to lose.

I started out taking on big risks — even at the age of 19 when I bought my first rental property in Florida.

I earn 21% a year on that investment, but it was very risky at that time because it was 2009 and people in Florida thought the world was ending. A lot of people told me that if I bought real estate, the price would drop even further after I bought it. But I studied the fundamentals and believed in my analysis of the numbers.

I’ve been taking pretty big risks ever since. Some of them failed miserably, others turned out well. I try not to take it personally when a decision I take turns out to be the wrong one. I just try to learn from my mistake and move on.

I’m also very persistent. I never give up. I will just keep trying new ways to solve a problem until I get it solved. I see a lot of people give up that I think could succeed if they could just stick with it a few months longer.

I’m also very good at completing tasks. A lot of people start things and then don’t finish them.

I set monthly and yearly milestones on a huge whiteboard in my office. I look at them every day. I check off the boxes once I complete them. Checking off boxes give me an oddly satisfying sensation.

The Logician

What exactly is Incrementum AG? What is the mission of the company? What is your position in the company? Why is it important?

Demelza Hays

Incrementum AG was founded in 2013. We are a licensed wealth management firm that has 6 funds and $100 million in assets under management.

I am a fund manager, and I am in the process of becoming a shareholder, which will be finished by Q4. Then I will be one of only five shareholders of that company.

We are one of the only asset managers that use the principles of the Austrian School of Economics to guide our investment decisions. We are very concerned about the economic developments in recent years especially with respect to the global rise in debt and extreme monetary measures taken by central banks.

We do not believe that the basis of today’s economy, i.e. the unbacked credit money system, is sustainable. That’s why we invest mostly in inflation hedging strategies and commodities.

We have actively managed accounts for high net worth individuals, we have funds, and we have two research teams — one for gold and one for crypto.

I head the crypto division, and we do data analysis and buy-side research for banks, governments, and companies. We also provide white-label research for companies that want to provide research for their clients on cryptocurrencies.

The Logician

A career in a fast-growing industry must be more challenging than most people assume! So what would you say are your industry's best and worst parts?

Demelza Hays

Great question. To be honest, I absolutely love my job. I will miss doing that job once I start having lots of kids, which I want to do. I want seven kids, and I want to homeschool them and cook them healthy food, so eventually, I will have to quit my job. I will miss living life in the fast lane.

There are so many wonderful parts of my job. I love meeting our existing clients and potential new clients. A lot of my job does feel like being James Bond or being a Bond Girl.

Believe it or not, I’m often driving in a fast car in the Alps, meeting with multi-millionaires, and sometimes, even billionaires. It’s great to tell my family the stories when I go home for holidays to the US.

However, it’s not just the money that these people have that is interesting. Some of them are incredibly interesting. Someone I met recently had bought the original desk of the Nobel Prize Winner’s Friedrich von Hayek. That just happens to be one of my favorite authors.

I also love writing articles that people actually read and give me feedback on. I think the one thing I am good at is writing, and I’m very happy that so much of my job involves research and writing.

I love studying the way financial markets work and trying to optimize our investment strategies with my co-fund manager at Incrementum, Mark Valek. He is brilliant and very experienced, so I can learn a lot and bounce ideas off of him.

The worse parts of my job are how I neglect every other aspect of my life. My job is so exhilarating that it is addicting. I actually already lost one fiancé because of my workaholicism.

Another bad part of my job is how many idiotic people I meet that have immense power. I meet very powerful asset managers that manage billions of dollars’ worth of people savings accounts and retirement plans.

One time I remember meeting a guy managing $6 billion worth of people’s savings, and he was so incompetent. I feel really bad for the retail investors of this large Austrian bank that do not even know that a completely incompetent person is in charge of managing their savings account. Unbelievable.

I also meet corrupt people from time to time, and those people really piss me off. Since I am financially well off enough, I can afford to come after those people in small ways.

I have to be careful which battles I pick because some of them are powerful enough to destroy my career (and even worse like hack into servers), but I try to do what I can to make people aware of the malicious actors that I have come across in the Swiss financial system.

To be honest, there aren’t that many, which is a great strength of Switzerland, but there are some snake oil salesmen (and women) around, and I try to draw attention to them in the Crypto Research Report if our compliance officers at Incrementum let me.

The Logician

How did you know cryptocurrencies are the perfect niche for you? When did you know this is what you are ‘supposed’ to do in life? What would you advise all young people still struggling to find their career path?

Demelza Hays

I’m motivated by my personal preferences and ethical values. I never wanted to work for a faceless corporation or work for a bank that just perpetuates the Cantillon Effect.
Working in the crypto space is great for me, because I feel like the more retail investors that learn how the euro/pound/dollar/franc, etc. are losing value because of inflation, the more people will switch into inflation-hedging assets like gold, crypto, real estate, small businesses, and human capital.
This will make each household stronger, and eventually, the whole world will be able to restore their ability to save money, and savings are the basis for economic growth.
I also know that I have family in America and in South Africa and I work in Europe, so I needed a job that let me do remote work so that I could travel. I also want to have lots of children, so I need a job where I can eventually work from home.
I couldn’t do a 9–5. Managing crypto assets for our clients and writing about cryptocurrencies is intellectually stimulating and fits with my travel needs.
I think I am extremely lucky to have found a job that pays so well and is so flexible. Sometimes I come into the office at 7 am, sometimes noon, and sometimes not at all if I feel like I need to go cycle for 50 kilometers around Lake Constance.
I’m a creative mind, and I can’t fit my “thinking” time into a 9–5-time slot. My moments of creativity come at random hours.
I would have never been able to find a job this great if I had stayed in America.

I think a lot of people just want to make enough money to take care of themselves and their family, so I would suggest that if someone is struggling to find a career path, they should move to a small country with low taxes, such as Cayman, Bahamas, Bermuda, Singapore, Panama, Portugal, Luxembourg, Andorra, etc. They will easily find a job that pays them well, and once they save up some money, they can start searching for their dream job or even build their dream job with their own savings.

The Logician

According to you, what is more important - smart or hard work? Education or experience?

Demelza Hays

It’s a mix of both. I think my education really helped me. I had no experience working in finance when I got hired as a junior fund manager at Incrementum.

On the other hand, a lot of my education was self-taught from reading books from the 1800s and watching YouTube and Kahn Academy.

I learned mathematics and Python and time series analysis in Toulouse, which I’m grateful for. If you have a chance to go to a top school that has few students and a high staff to student ratio, then I would take it, but I wouldn’t take on hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt to study art or history at Harvard.

I would only take on debt to study math or computer science. Toulouse was free when I went there if you had good grades during your undergraduate degree.

The Logician

What are your “5 Life Lessons I Learned From My Experience’’? Please explain.

Demelza Hays

I’m not going to waste time stating the basics like being punctual and honest, but those are obviously important.

Save money. In order to free yourself from working the 9–5, you need to have two basic ingredients — a good idea and money in order to invest in your idea. If you start working a 9–5 and your boss knows you are poor, he will give you all of the crap work and make you work weekends because (s)he knows you need the money. Juxtapose that with a scenario where you work because you like working not because you are desperate for money, and you will immediately see how quickly your boss and your colleagues change how they treat you. Before I had money, I would actually just pretend that I had money in order to make my boss respect me more. Spend less than you earn, save every penny you can, and invest those pennies in a diversified range of investments that can protect you on a rainy day.
Quit jobs that you don’t like. Everyone says don’t quit a job before one year because it looks bad on your resume. If you assume you will work from age 25 to age 65, that’s only forty years, so you are wasting over 2% of your career in order to please your family and your boss, and I can tell you that your boss doesn’t even care about you most of the time. And your 20s matter even more than your 30s so wasted years in your 20s can really destroy the rest of your career. When someone applies to work at Incrementum, I don’t care where or how long they worked previously. I just want to know if they have skills and can do the job or not. I have quit lots of jobs, including a prestigious one working for a Congresswoman in the U.S. House of Representatives. I quit after three weeks. I hated it. I have also often given my bosses ultimatums like, “Raise my salary or I quit.” It works like a charm, and then you realize your boss had been previously underpaying you, and he didn’t give a damn about fairness. Sometimes they didn’t raise my salary, and I had to walk. It’s an aggressive move, but I think you need to be a bit aggressive in order to raise the ranks.
Become an owner. Save up money and then buy financial assets or invest in your own ideas or buy private equity of a startup or buy real estate. Don’t just work as an employee from 9–5. Other people are getting rich off of you.
Don’t get drunk in front of your colleagues and bosses too often. I’m trying not to get drunk anymore because I’m getting old enough to where it’s beginning to look inappropriate, but sometimes, I still do it, and I feel really embarrassed the next day. People lose confidence in you when you can’t control your drinking.
This last one is for women that like men and wants kids. Don’t date men below the age of 30. They will just waste your time and hurt you. Men in their 20s are so full of testosterone, which makes them aggressive. I mean it has a healthy biological purpose — when we were hunter-gatherers, the tribes that could defend themselves and garner new resources were the tribes that survived. Men had to have enough testosterone to go to the battlefield and fight for their families and land — even if that meant dying. Testosterone peaks in men at age 27 and then begins to decline on average, which is when they become more family-oriented and considerate of their partner’s needs. I wasted my 20s dating men younger than me that didn’t want kids or were too aggressive to build a family.

Also, women can’t have their cake and eat it too no matter how much the media is trying to tell women they can.

If you want a husband and kids, then don’t fall into the trap that a lot of women do which is to focus on your education and career until you are 30 and then get out on dating scene and realize no man wants you.

Women hit peak fertility at age 28, and then it declines from there on average.

There are a lot of single and childless women in their late 30s and early 40s, and although, some of them are happy, I know a lot of them that overeat, drink too much, smoke too much, and take pharmaceuticals in order to cope with the reality of being alone.

The Logician

What motivates you to jump out of bed every morning? What are the best habits you believe we all should have that will help us significantly in life and work?

Demelza Hays

Well, I’m a real weirdo. I keep my phone on airplane mode and off most of the day.

I put my phone in a small faraway bag that blocks all signals when I am not using it. I place all of my laptops in a large faraway bag when I am not using it.

I know the science on electromagnetic pollution is not “sound”, but I do not feel comfortable with the fact that 4G has basically wiped out the insect population in developed countries.

If it can kill bugs, it can damage humans. I also do not like the idea of Google and Apple and NSA listening to my conversations.

I do not read new emails until afternoon. In the morning, I work on existing tasks that I must complete, and I ignore all new requests coming in.

I also do not drink milk unless it is raw, unpasteurized, and unhomogenized. A lot of the milk at the stores has been heated to kill off bacteria, but it also kills off nutrients.

I do not use plastic ever. I do not use Teflon. I use copper, steel, cast iron, and glass.

I test my water source, and I purify my water with a very high-quality water purifier.

I have a 100% organic mattress. If your fingers or legs fall asleep when you are sleeping, it could be because of a low-quality mattress. We spend a third of life sleeping, and yet be basically just buy the cheapest mattress on the market.

I started to read about the boric acid and chemicals that the average mattress is doused in, and then I made the switch to organic sleep materials.

I do not take any pharmaceuticals unless it is a life or death emergency, including birth control pills. That stuff messes with your hormones.

In the U.S., they prescribe you Xanax and Ritalin like it’s candy. But it messes with your body’s natural mechanisms and makes your body unable to function without it. I don’t trust doctors that try to prescribe me stuff. I only see doctors that use natural remedies like fasting.

I mostly only eat meat, eggs, and dairy. Sometimes vegetables. Never bread, rice, pasta, or processed foods. Carnivore — Keto diet. I try to eat once a day at the same time every day.

I’m motivated to jump out of bed so that I can spend another day with my loved ones including my husband, father, and Aunt and Uncle.

I want to spend quality time with them and make enough money to make sure they are well provided for.

The Logician

Let’s say it is the year 2030. Where are you and your work by then?

Demelza Hays

I will be in Liechtenstein, where I want to live for the rest of my life. I will have a husband and seven children, and my father will be living with us and enjoying time with grandkids.

I will be writing freelance articles for Forbes just for fun and collecting dividends from my passive income sources.

The Logician

Finally, what is your best advice for everyone who fears they will not succeed?

Demelza Hays

I think each individual has their own personal obstacles that they must overcome in order to have career success.

I met a venture capitalist in Palo Alto once that told me that he never invests in startups that only have one team member because it’s a Single Point of Failure in crypto jargon.

It’s not diversified. The company is relying on that person and if anything happens to that person, the company goes under. That really stuck with me. I need to have a team of people in order to keep me motivated. It’s the same when I go to the gym.

If I go alone, I quickly stop going, but if I have a gym squad that regularly goes with me, then I actually enjoy going on a regular basis.

Teams are great because the team members can complement each other’s weaknesses and strengths.

I have met people that are very insecure, and in my opinion, they would benefit from having business partners gently support them when they are expressing their ideas. I think after months of being gentle to someone, they can actually grow into the role so to speak and blossom and become productive.

I have also met people that give up too early. I think they would benefit from having a teammate that can remind them of how far they have come and how great the crossing the finish line will be.

Starting a company can be really overwhelming when you do it alone. It’s a lot more fun when you can share the successes and failures with other people.

The Logician

Demelza’s story proves that you can do anything from scratch if you dedicate yourself to it. Thank you, Demelza, for reminding me of the importance of showing up, taking risks, and believing in yourself. I appreciate your story, and the fact you didn’t let her hardships get in your way. I can’t wait to hear about your future endeavors in Lichtenstein and read your upcoming articles on Forbes!

The Logician

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