Silver Rounds Vs Silver Coins

Governments might not be able to trace your gold or silver ... but the US already has shown they can bar you from owning it. They have already done so with gold in the past. If you can't own it - you also can't sell it... so while they aren't taking it from you they can make it useless to you as well.

Can anyone please state examples of individuals in the US that have been jailed, or prosecuted for owning gold? I really doubt that it's ever happened.

But it did. The Wikipedia article on Executive Order 6102 lists several individuals and companies who were charged under the Order and resultant Gold Reserve Act, including some who served jail time.

It should perhaps be pointed out that rarely were such prosecutions conducted in isolation; hoards of gold were usually found as a by-product of other police investigations, such as fraud or tax evasion. So "gold hoarding" was simply one more charge they could throw at an accused criminal that was already having the book thrown at them. They certainly never sent out the jackbooted stormtroopers to search the homes of otherwise innocent people who might be hoarding gold and they never seized bank safety deposit boxes for a systematic search for secret hoards of gold.

It should also be pointed out that this previous instance of gold nationalization applied to all gold, whether in legal tender coin form or bullion form (since this was long before the invention of the concept of either "bullion rounds" or "bullion coins", all such non-legal-tender bullion was in ingot or scrap metal form). So the OP's question about rounds versus coins would have been irrelevant if this discussion were happening in 1934, as both were equally liable to forfeiture. Indeed, Section 2b of the Order gave specific exemptions for "gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins" - in other words, coins which had a market value significantly above face or bullion value were immune from forfeiture. As far as I know, exactly how "special" or significant that difference in value had to be before a coin was considered exempt was never tested in court, but owning legal tender collectable coins was actually preferable to owning generic bullion back in 1934.

I heard there was a business owner (I cannot remember where, maybe Nevada?) that was paying his workers in US minted gold (and maybe silver) coins. The employees could/would report only the face value of the coins of their income, and the employer would only report the face value on his payroll.

Last I knew he was in deep with the IRS, but I don't know what eventually resulted. Maybe someone here does?

Yup. Just goes to show you that the face value of the coins means next to nothing. It matters what the coin is made of. Straight from the IRS.