I learned the hard way that Hodling BTC is the only way. I wanted to grow my BTC so i sold my 1BTC @32K a month ago and put that money in DeFi for yield farming in those high APY. I took some losses and some gains. Now BTC jumped 47K. If i would have just HODL all this way i would have more USDT then if i buy BTC now. Lesson i Learned: Yield farming is useless. People put so much at risk entering smart contract not to mention the daily time waste. Just HODL and you would have more more money than anyone yield farming in long run.
Too bad, anyway, as you have said, this is a learning experience for you, but very expensive one, many newbies fall for the Defi hype, and they didn't know that it is riskier than going full
BTC, and just HODL. I would say though that Yield farming is useless, but you are caught in the hype around it and thought that it is the best way to earn huge money in short amount of time. It doesn't work that way here, most of the time it is a lot of ups and downs. Maybe the better approach is put all the majority of your investment in bitcoin and they try some on alts.