I lost about $3k doing algo crypto trading (all of that to fees - without fees I made money! aha) but learned a ton about different programming concepts and had a lot of fun.
That's awesome! :) That sounds like an amazing experience. I bet you learned a lot! And 3k is enough to make it memorable but not enough to go into massive debt or anything like that. And sure it's a loss but nobody goes into this trying to lose money. (AFAIK)