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So couple things:

1. Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are certainly not untraceable. Public ledger means that all the transactions are publicly visible - if you can associate a wallet to a person or organization then you know where the money went, and there are businesses that specifically do that kind of research. Every single transaction ever is part of the blockchain record. Cryptocurrency is a terrible way to make a clandestine purchase.
2. All currencies are made up (I know, real imfourteenandthisisdeep energy, but still technicallythetruth).

*Edit - A silly caveat to this is that if the US government starts regularly transacting in Bitcoin, it would be very easy to audit... using blockchain means there's a built-in transaction record... anybody with a little bit of experience in reading the ledger could just track everything.

Other than that you're absolutely right.

1. Cryptocurrencies are still largely unregulated, and the crypto market has attracted exactly the kind of people you would expect to be most interested in unregulated financial transactions - scammers, thieves, con men, ransomware gangs, money launderers, and anyone who wants buy or sell CSAM, narcotics, weapons, DDOS-as-a-Service, and North Korea's government funding crew. The crypto market is absolutely chock-full of criminal activity, so it's entirely reasonable to assume that anyone who wants to participate in that market wants to participate in the crime.
2. As you said, trading physical gold for digital currency is a stupid idea. It's also uneccessary, because the FBI is already sitting on a collection of cryptocurrencies that have been confiscated through criminal investigations, including large amounts of Bitcoin. It is technically illegal right now for the US government to do anything with that, but that could be changed with a law. There's nowhere else for that cryptocurrency to go anyway.

It seems likely to me that a play to distribute gold from the reserve is about having an excuse to open it and take gold out, and disappear some of it in the process. It's a cover for a plan to rob the US.