I tried this with an Android app and it went well for us. The only problem was that the UI was super slow in Firefox, but it worked well in Chrome. That was several months ago so hopefully they fixed it by now.
If you use a VISA check card from your bank you can easily monitor all expenses through your company bank account. I found this helpful for my startup, but as you get bigger and spend more money you'll probably want to look at cards that give you extras (cash back, etc...).
The scary part of this problem is buying medications or things you ingest. I no longer buy any kind of food or health products on Amazon because I worry they may be fake.
Buying fake food and health products is dangerous.
I don't buy pet food from Amazon either for the same reason.
It's also interesting the article refers to Sarao as frugal. If he was really frugal it seems like he would have said that X amount of money is enough and stopped risking it all. Scary stuff!
I like it a lot! The only thing that bothered me was how the star ratings show numbers instead of the stars, so I have to look carefully at the ratings before choosing an app.
With a star * rating the rating is visual, so I can easily see at a glance what the rating is.
Chatting instead of posting comments seems like a cool idea. You just need to get enough installs so you have a critical mass of people chatting, then it should build up. Good luck with the idea!
Find apps you like then do some research and see if you can get a general idea of the revenue they are making. If it looks like you could afford to acquire them then email them and see what happens.
I always thought it seemed impossible to make a new virtual world community because of all the energy and time that would go into building all the background graphics. Using Streetview solves the problem. Very cool idea!