{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T14:08:51Z","timestamp":1785334131762,"version":"3.55.0"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"group-title":"SSRN","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Elsevier BV","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,1]],"date-time":"2026-01-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1767225600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.uspto.gov\/ip-policy\/copyright-policy\/copyright-basics"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:p>I assemble a sixteen-year panel of unit prices charged by commercial CAPTCHA-solving services, reconstructed from Wayback Machine snapshots of six providers between January 2010 and May 2026. The panel covers 514 monthly price observations across twelve puzzle families. Using a within-puzzle-type specification with five provider clusters, I find that providers founded before the mid-2010s charge 138% more than providers founded after that point on identical puzzle types (cluster-robust t-statistic of 5.05; wildcluster bootstrap p-value of 0.030). An exact permutation test over all 10 possible 3-of-5 groupings of active providers shows that the founding-date classification produces the largest log-price gap of any possible cohort assignment. The within-generation pricedecay coefficient is statistically indistinguishable from zero in both eras, and the era \u00d7 time interaction is essentially zero. The two markets are segmented and no convergence is detectable within the observed panel window. Over the panel, the median text-distortion price has fallen 1.8\u00d7 (from $1.75 to $1.00 per thousand puzzles), while the minimum observed price has fallen 10\u00d7 (from $1.00 to $0.10). The findings are consistent with the entry of AI-native firms operating under substantially different cost structures, rather than gradual within-incumbent price erosion. The decline at the market floor is associated with the entry of structurally new providers whose list prices have remained categorically below those of the hybrid incumbents documented by Motoyama et al. (2010); the median has remained anchored by the unchanged pricing of those incumbents.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.6786540","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:32:30Z","timestamp":1785331950000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Entry, Not Decay: A Sixteen-Year Panel of CAPTCHA-Solving Prices, 2010-2026"],"prefix":"10.2139","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-8477-9393","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Boon Chuan","family":"Lim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"78","container-title":[],"original-title":[],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:32:31Z","timestamp":1785331951000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.ssrn.com\/abstract=6786540"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.6786540","relation":{},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"subtype":"preprint"}}