I'm pretty sure the effect was temporary and he had to do it a second time. It's very important to note that this research is still very new and he was lucky that his genetic code was prime for that test. (I'm not against bio hackers btw. I think they provide a very good service though obviously more risky. No problems when that risk is on yourself but just trying to say "don't try this at home").
Both. The internet was full of early adopter, tech enthusiast types. You'd certainly pickup on this. Maybe a bit of the magic was your youth, but the tech was new and magical to everyone.
Every article I read back then was written by a real person about something they cared about. Now it feels like every search result is just 100 pages of AI generated, generic content used to drive clicks to the site. And what content is actually written by a real person, it's in service to their brand and it's tuned for engagement and sharing on social media.
A lot of software back then was open and didn't hide too many of the details. Today, all the technical bits are hidden away and user experiences are carefully controlled and tuned for engagement. Think IRC vs Slack or FB messenger. On irc, you can whois, dcc, technical bits everywhere in the UI.
In the 90s, there was a question whether or not you should include ads and banners on your site. Later, it seemed like the ads went away but actually they took over. So much of the internet experience now is about monetization. Even malware is about making money. You gotta jump into the new tech to get that feeling of wonder and possibly.
Most BTC is held by an exchange, like Coinbase, Binance, etc... so this statistic is about as meaningful as pointing out that 95% of US dollars are stored at a bank.
A lot of BTC was held by an exchange like Mt. Gox and Bitfinex, too.
With banks I can trust that I can actually get my money bank. BTC isn't decentralised, and the central actors controlling the system are far less reputable (which is saying a lot, when they're being compared to bankers).
So that metric is really bad because almost every Bitcoin wallet only uses each address once, for privacy reasons. Most of those bottom 98% of addresses probably have very small amounts and are just a small part of someones wallet.
An "address" can mean anything - a person can have a wallet with multiple addresses, or an address could belong to an exchange with holds it on behalf of multiple people.
There's a guy on YouTube doing diy gene therapy to treat his lactose intolerance so it's not exactly science fiction.