Bitstamp and ebay both insult their established customers with captchas, and lose custom
As a matter of principle, businesses should be able to authenticate their own customers. If a business provides service over the internet, they should be able to authenticate their customers over the internet. If the business is handling a lot of valuable assets and / or money on behalf of their client, then the business must be able to authenticate their customers. There is no excuse not to be able to. Captchas are infuriating "prove you're a human" bullshit, that values the time of the "human" at zero, and presumes to put the "human" to work for free, training some machine-learning database, with the side effect of some dorks walking around claiming they "work in AI". Captchas, at a stretch, may be acceptable as a way of filtering anonymous strangers who turned up at a web site and want to do something. Maybe they want to post, maybe they want to create an account, maybe it's something else. Captchas are never acceptable as an ingre...