“...does this mean I can’t walk into a coin dealer and cash out a roll of silver eagles?”
NO, but you can’t as a private investor buy and sell futures in the metals market, unless you take or make delivery. Private speculators are out, but the banks and big corp. dealers are not affected.
That is what they need to do with Oil.
What does this do to Comex? Do they have to unwind all the open contracts?
How could they do that? It would cost the shorts billions!