While I don't know the numbers, I'd guess that traditional financial systems all together probably are processing orders if magnitudes more transactions.
So while a pure total energy consumption comparison is one thing it would be interesting to conpare energy consumption on a few different factors:
total energy consumption
energy consumption per transaction
energy consumption per user
energy consumption per $ amount transacted
Not saying traditional finance would come out on top, I'm legitimately curious
I'm no expert on inspecting bridges, but I'd think that you still would need a professional inspector to do the inspecting, only that they would save the time of actually travelling out to the bridge themselves and instead could do it in their office, no?
And then there are probably things which still need to be done on site, such as non-visual inspections (ultrasound, X-Ray, Vibration testing, Tourque measuring on bolts, paint thickness,...? IDK)
For some great irony check out this wan show segment where linus talks about how he doesn't like that a prototype (backpack) of theirs ended up in the hands of the public
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwgZaSYuBLc&t=3209
Time 53:29, in case the timestamped link doesn't work
Yes, but it is very quick and cheap to get a domain validated cert from a CA that is generally trusted by most web browsers, so once the bad actor has the domain, the should be able to trick most users, only maybe certificate pinning might help, but that is not widely used.
Wouldn't the "no postage required" business reply label link to the original mailing anyway, i.e. clould that not be linked to your address?