We must admit that almost all financial rewards here in Steem are disconnected from the "real world" value. Yes, $12000 is well overpriced if we compare it to the outside world prices, but so are many other posts and comments, including mine.
I think it will be very difficult to draw a line between platform update announcements and educational blog posts describing somebody's thought process. For me, @dan's posts fall more or less half way between those two extremes.