Mad Bitcoins is a particular sensibility — half irreverent, half conspiratorial, anti-corporate, deliberately ugly when ugliness is funnier than craft. The 2022 MidJourney archive is the record of that sensibility. The question this essay asks is simple: when you run that archive's prompts through the 2026 models, which one — ChatGPT (GPT-image-1) or Google Gemini — gets closer to the Mad Bitcoins vibe?
The short answer is ChatGPT, by a wide margin, and largely because ChatGPT is more willing to render edgy subject matter at all. But that's not the whole story.
Where ChatGPT wins
The Satan collection is the cleanest case. Gemini refused all three Satan variants — every one timed out. ChatGPT delivered all three, and they read like Mad Bitcoins material: a Monet-style smoking devil, a Soviet-propaganda Satan, a baseline cartoon figure. Whether or not you find them tasteful, they are actually images, which is what the prompt asked for.
The Iron Bulls collection — bitcoin-themed war machines — has the same pattern. ChatGPT renders the bitcoin-logo robotic bull; Gemini times out on every iron-bulls prompt. Howard Stern as Doctor Doom, capitol-with-bitcoin-logo, Stern-as-Spider-Man — ChatGPT delivers, Gemini doesn't.
This pattern (Mad Bitcoins material is darker, edgier, politically charged — the kind of thing Gemini's content posture refuses) gives ChatGPT a structural advantage. If you simply count "which model produced an image at all," ChatGPT wins handily.
Where Gemini wins
But "produces an image" is not the same as "captures the vibe." When both models do produce output, Gemini is sometimes closer to the original feeling because Gemini's house style is more illustrated, more painterly, less product-photo-glossy. The raccoon-bestiary is the case in point: both models delivered all four prompts, but Gemini's results lean toward illustration where ChatGPT's lean toward Pixar-poster.
The 2022 raccoon is a single moody figure on a soft moonscape. ChatGPT 2026 gave him a space helmet and a Saturn V. Gemini gave him a children's-book flag and a smile. Neither is right, but Gemini's mistake is closer in tone to the MJ original — small, illustrated, slightly absurd.
The same trend shows up in the Mad Hatter. ChatGPT renders the Hatter as a souvenir-shop mascot; Gemini renders him as a slightly off-center editorial illustration. Gemini's version is less polished, less commercial, more recognizably weird — and weird is the Mad Bitcoins signature.
The collection-by-collection tally
Going through the eleven collections and asking, which model produced output that is closer in vibe to the 2022 MJ original:
- Raccoon-bestiary — Gemini wins on tone; ChatGPT wins on completeness.
- Rabbit-hole — Gemini wins. Less polished, more book-illustration.
- Bond-sequence — Tie. Both deliver, both photoreal.
- Mickey-inverted — Gemini wins by default — ChatGPT refused them all.
- Cubist-skylines — Tie, slightly to ChatGPT for color fidelity to MJ.
- Evolutionary-diagrams — ChatGPT wins. Cleaner line-drawing register.
- Imagined-battles — Both struggle. ChatGPT delivers more variants.
- Iron-bulls — ChatGPT, by walkover (Gemini refused all).
- Capitol-burns — ChatGPT, by walkover.
- Howard-stern-mythos — ChatGPT, by walkover on the harder prompts.
- Satan-smoking-weed — ChatGPT, by walkover.
The right answer is "use both"
If the goal were to recreate the Mad Bitcoins archive faithfully in 2026, you'd run every prompt through both models and pick. ChatGPT for the dark / political / branded prompts; Gemini for the illustrated / whimsical / animal prompts; MidJourney v6 (not in this pilot) for the painterly defaults that 2022 MJ v3 specialized in. No 2026 model captures the original vibe by itself, because the original vibe was a particular operator working a particular tool in a particular cultural moment — and that moment isn't 2026.
What we have instead is two competent, distinct, slightly-too-polite 2026 image models, each refusing different parts of the brief, each producing handsome images that look like merchandise. The Mad Bitcoins vibe was never about merchandise. It was about poking the system. The 2026 models are the system.